Our first London Irish Play festival ran took place from July to November in 2016. We staged six new plays across four venues :
Bread and Roses, Clapham
The Lion and Unicorn Theatre , Kentish Town
The Colour House Theatre, Colliers Wood
West London Trades Union Club, Acton
The six plays listed below had been written to show how the 1916 Easter Rising and the events following it had impacted on the lives of Irish people living in London. T
Traitors, Cads and Cowards by Martin McNamara
Wandsworth Prison, South London 1916.
Following the Easter Rising, an Irish volunteer is sent to Wandsworth Prison and bunked with a British army deserter and a conscientious objector. Can three very different ‘traitors to the King’ find common ground?
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Crows by day, Jackals by Night by Maureen Alcorn
Kilburn, London NW and Burma 1942- 45
Donegal man Tommy couldn’t wait to join the British army to fight Nazi fascism. But can his high ideals survive service in the Far East? And how will his young Irish wife in London cope with separation?
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Body and Blood by Lorraine Mullaney
1956 Archway, North London
Aileen comes to London in 1956 looking for her sister, Maeve, who has run away from home to escape an arranged marriage to a man “with a face like The Turin Shroud”. Will Aileen find Maeve? And will she want to go back to Ireland herself once she’s tasted the freedom that London has to offer?
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Just Above Dogs by Anne Curtis
Kilburn 1971 and today
Brothers Mikey and Dec arrived in 1970s Camden looking of a start in the building trade. Forty years on they are estranged: one brother lives in a hostel for the homeless, the other is a wealthy building contractor. What happened in the intervening years?
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The Importance of Being by Anne Curtis
Catford 2006
Until two years ago Maeve Dennehy’s garden was the best kept on the estate, now volunteer be-friender Dawn must climb across junk and piles of newspapers to enter the flat. What happened to cause this change?
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Women’s’ Lives by Anna Mae Mangan
Wembley 2016
Nora, 80, has forgotten that she’s Irish, her 25 year old granddaughter Eilis was born in London but think she’s Irish, and stuck in the middle is Moya. How will these three generations of women survive the Easter weekend together?
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