Anna May Mangan writes about her play Women’s Work

It was over 12 months ago when Green Curtain Theatre Producer Anne Curtis and I met for coffee, and she kindly invited me aboard her festival of new plays that would explore issues around the 1916 centenary.

Back then, the whole idea was just a twinkle in her eye and now the exciting scripts are written, a comfy theatre booked, a brilliant cast assembled and all that is left to do is sell lots of tickets!

My play for the festival Women’s Work takes a frank and loving look at three generations of women in one family. Grandmother Nora has dementia and grinds on her recovering alcoholic and divorced daughter Moya. Grandaughter Eilis is educated, unemployed and spectacularly selfish. She floats around her mother and grandmother with a vivid confidence of youth.

Women’s Work is a play about diaspora and identity; Nora doesn’t remember where she is from, Moya doesn’t care where she is from and Hammersmith-born Eilis is fiercely Irish.

I wanted these women and their past, present and futures to engage an audience; to make them laugh and cry and consider how the most common of Irish experiences – leaving, and being left – are emotional wrecking balls.

It took a lot of re-writes, read-throughs and tea and cake to get to this point with Women’s Work. I hope you love what’s good about it, and forgive what isn’t.

Click here to book tickets for performances on
10th-16th October in Kentish Town, London NW5

Click here to book tickets for performances on
21st -23rd October in Colliers Wood, London SW19