Irish Theatre Online
World Premiere
The Visiting Hour
by Frank McGuinness
May 10 – 23, 2021
The Gate Theatre was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir.
“All visitors are asked to respect the visiting hour, and not to exceed sixty minutes with your loved ones.” A moving new play about an Irish father (Stephen Rea) and daughter (Judith Roddy) at visiting hour in a nursing home during the pandemic. Streamed live each night, €15 – 50.
A direct response to the report on Mother and Baby Homes
Home: Part One
Mar 17 – Jul 17, 2021
The Abbey is Ireland’s national theatre.
In January 2021 the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes published its report investigating the discrimination experienced by vulnerable women and children in Mother and Baby Institutions in Ireland. It asserted that, over 76 years from 1922 to 1998, some 56,000 mothers and 57,000 children were kept in the 14 Mother and Baby Institutions and four County Homes it examined.
A series of three minute postcards from underrepresented voices in Irish society
Dear Ireland III
Dec 17, 2020 – May 14, 2021
In association with Trafalgar Theatre Productions
On Blueberry Hill
by Sebastian Barry
In Barry’s beautiful style, On Blueberry Hill features best of friends and worst of enemies Christy (Niall Buggy) and PJ (David Ganly), who are destined to share their lives for twenty years. As the two men reflect on the hope and torment of life outside — they slowly uncover the events that have led them to their world with explosive, bittersweet consequences.
Sebastian Barry wrote Tales of Ballycumber, which Corrib Theatre had a reading of in 2014.
DruidSynge
Plays Written by JM Synge
Directed by Garry Hynes
In 2005, Druid presented the first ever staging of all John Millington Synge’s entire theatrical canon. Five of these plays are now available for online viewing.
In Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows, Deirdre is loving and heroic and sets fate on when she induces the great young warrior Naisi to escape with her to Scotland, so avoiding marriage to the aged King Conchubar.
Riders of the Sea is set on the Aran Island, Inishmaan. The plot is based not on the traditional conflict of human wills but on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal but relentless cruelty of the sea.
In The Well of the Saints, Martin and Mary Doul are an old, blind couple of the roads. When a wandering Saint offers them the miracle of their sight restored, they gladly accept. But instead of finding joy and happiness, they discover a seeing world that is a lot more complicated than they could ever have imagined.
The Shadow of the Glen‘s Nora schemes a fresh union with a neighbor shepherd even while her husband’s body is not yet cold.
Synge’s great comic masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, tells the story of Christy Mahon, who stumbles into a public house in County Mayo claiming he has killed his father and so capturing the romantic attention of the daughter of the house, Pegeen Mike.
A selection of tiny plays submitted from the #TinyPlayChallenge
Tiny Play Challenge
Fishamble wanted people to keep their creativity flowing by challenging people in Ireland and around the world, to write 600 word Tiny Plays. They received over 470 submissions in total for the #TinyPlayChallenge, and published 34 of them on their website. Each play is only a couple of minutes long. Perform them yourself for a creative lockdown activity!
