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Showing posts from 2015

Ruminations on #wakingthefeminists

‘How to be the perfect Romantic Poet: be born male.’ LIZ LOCHHEAD When the TLS asked me to review Charlotte Headrick and Eileen Kearney’s Irish Women Dramatists earlier this year, I did some research into the commissioning of female playwrights in Irish theatre companies. I contacted Patrick Lonergan of NUI Galway who sent me some statistics about the Abbey. Suffice to say, I was gobsmacked: since the new Abbey Theatre building opened in Dublin in 1966, six plays on the main Abbey stage have been written by women - Edna O’Brien, Jeanne Binnie, Elaine Murphy, three plays by Marina Carr. That’s a total of four women commissioned, compared to approximately 320 plays staged during this period that were penned by men.  I wrote a longer feature than I was commissioned to write and the TLS decided to publish. They are shocking stats but they are in keeping with stats on female playwrights in the UK and US, though the Irish figures have not improved more recently as they’...
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The Mushroom Pickers, published at last!

 Nine years after it was first staged, my play  The Mushroom Pickers  has finally been published - by Samuel French. This play, winner of the 2005 SCDA Playwriting Competition, ran for three weeks at the Southwark Playhouse in 2006, and starred Catherine Cusack as Laura, Michael Culkin as her father Philip, Sam Kenyon as Tom, John Kirk as Frank and Caroline John (now deceased) as Nancy. It was directed by the brilliant Svetlana Dimcovic and received excellent reviews all-round, particularly from Kieron Quirke of the Evening Standard. Svetlana directed the play with a small budget and many of the forest and wild-mushroom scenes were, I remember, quite magical. The play received its American premiere in 2009, when it was staged at the Gene Frankel Theatre, with Maxine Linehan in the role of Laura. It has been lovely to revisit this play in recent months as I prepared it for publication. Also, published is  Leopoldville , which won the 2010 Papatango New Writing P...
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August Notes

It’s been a few months since I last made an entry here. I’ve been busy (and grieving for my father – the adage that grief comes in waves is true, it does - I’ll be writing about that soon). For the past two months I’ve been finalising the proofs of my plays The Mushroom Pickers and Leopoldville . It has been lovely to return to these very different works and I’m really looking forward to the plans that Samuel French has for the promotion of my trio of plays – including Belfast Girls . There is also probably going to be a launch of the book of Belfast Girls in Ireland   – more details about that anon. I’ve also got a reading of a new play, Bohemians – formerly a short piece  – which is included in the Fall Festival of New Plays presented by Artemisia, the company who did such a magnificent job of Belfast Girl s in Chicago earlier this year ( Belfast Girls was the Windy City Times’ Critics’ Pick and Theatreworld Magazine called it a work of   ‘tremendous imaginat...
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Belfast Girls, Chicago Review - by Colin Douglas for Chicago Theatre Review

CHICAGO THEATRE REVIEW To Begin Again in Australia theatredude   May 17, 2015   Reviews   0 Comments Belfast Girls – Artemisia In the early nineteenth century colonial authorities wanted new blood for Australia. In order to attract female  settlers to make the long, treacherous journey to the land down under, because men outnumbered women there eight to one, the Orphan Emigration Scheme was devised. The Australian government promised to fund all transportation costs, in addition to providing the women with a trousseau of clothing, appropriate religious literature and wooden traveling crates. There were, however, very strict guidelines for any woman wishing to take advantage of this plan. The girls had to be between 14 and 18 years of age, in good health, “imbued with religion and morally pure” and possessing necessary industrial skills. As a result of The Great Potato Famine, the workhouses and poorhouses of Ireland were overflowing with the poor an...
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Belfast Girls, Chicago Review: Theatre World Internet Magazine, Ruth Smerling

Artemisia Theatre presents Belfast Girls by  Jaki  McCarrick        directed  by Julie  Proudfood at  the Den Theatre until June 14 th ARTEMISIA’S MUCH ANTICIPATED  BELFAST GIRLS  BY CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED PLAYWRIGHT JAKI MCCARRICK MAKES ITS U.S. DEBUT AT THE DEN THEATRE IN WICKER PARK The mission of the Artemisia reads as follows:  “Artemisia produces plays that empower women, gives playwrights career-altering opportunities and brings  groundbreaking  new theatre to Chicago audiences, who are engaged as a vital part of Artemisia’s play selection process.”  Given this commitment to theatre and emphasis on giving voice to women, Playwright Jaki  McCarrick’s  searing shipboard drama Belfast Girls is a good fit for the company’s 2015 season. Directed by Artemisia Artistic Director Julie  Proudfoot , Belfast Girls takes place abroad the  Inch...
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Belfast Girls, Chicago: Windy City Times, Review "Highly Recommended"

THEATER REVIEW Belfast Girls by Mary Shen Barnidge 2015-05-27 Playwright: Jaki McCarrick. At: Artemisia, A Chicago Theatre at the Den, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets:  832-819-4336 ;  www.artemisiatheatre.org ; $25. Runs through: June 14 The Orphan Emigration Scheme probably seemed a good idea when Earl Grey first hatched it in 1848: The predominantly male British colonies in Australia wanted the stabilizing influence of females, so young orphanage-raised women of good character and useful domestic skills were awarded ship's passage, along with room and board, to the land "down under." What could go wrong? First, Australia was a penal colony, where long-term criminals who would otherwise have festered in the overcrowded home-counties correctional facilities were exiled to serve out their sentences laboring in the wilderness. Second, Ireland was suffering a crop failure so severe that a major segment of its populace died of starvation. Families who could affo...
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