Belfast Girls opens in Canada next week!

 A few days from now my play BELFAST GIRLS makes its debut in Canada. Peninsula Productions will stage the play at the Coast Capital Playhouse in White Rock from March 1 to 11^th from where it will then travel to Vancouver and run at the Cultch Theatre from March 15^th to 18^th. These later shows are part of the Vancouver Celtic Festival. This is the third international production of the play (and I hope to announce a fourth soon – also in the USA, proposed for later this year, a production that will hopefully also tour to Sydney). I am so delighted that Peninsula Productions’ Artistic Director Wendy Bollard has decided to stage the play. She is a wonderful director and has assembled a cracking cast and production team.

BELFAST GIRLS was developed at the National Theatre Studio (London) in 2012 and while on the surface it is a feminist ‘Irish Famine’ story, it is also part allegory for the Irish banking crisis and how the Irish government handled this (by mainly encouraging emigration and giving away – in the form of bondholder payments – the funds required to run society etc).

And while seemingly an ‘Irish’ play it does not really have its roots in Irish theatre. It IS informed on the other hand by my interest in the work of Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill. Also, my passion for the writings of Genet and Antonin Artaud have also very much informed the work. The striking image of the ‘mast scene’, for instance, is a nod to Artaudian spectacle. Anyway, what the writer intends and what is seen by an audience are often two different things – but these are my influences laid bare nonetheless.

There is also likely to be a production of BELFAST GIRLS in the UK this year and I'm currently adapting the work for the screen.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish Wendy and the cast at Peninsula a massive THANK YOU and best wishes in the days coming up to Opening Night. I look forward to seeing the show soon!