Brave and incisive new works from two of Ireland’s sharpest playwrights, The Boy by Marina Carr and BÁN by Carys D. Coburn, will bring audiences face-to-face with cataclysmic, foundational events and their effects across generations of family life, on the Abbey Stage and Peacock Stage respectively. Beyond the building, a co-production of a new work from Gina Moxley aspires to right the wrongs of art history and the erasure of women within it through an unapologetically punk promenade performance. Elsewhere, a decade on from Waking the Feminists, the Abbey Stage will host two book launches exploring institutional change through feminist strategies of complaint, listening, and sector transformation.
The Boy: A Two-Play Theatrical Event, written by Marina Carr and directed by Caitríona McLaughlin
An Abbey Theatre production on the Abbey Stage
Monday, 15th September – Saturday, 1st November
The Boy: A Two Play Theatrical Event offers a radical, contemporary and unmistakably Irish interpretation of the Greek myths of Sophocles’ Theban Trilogy. Directed by Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, Caitríona McLaughlin, the cast includes Frank Blake, Amy Conroy, Zara Devlin, Olwen Fouéré, Frank McCusker and Eileen Walsh. Continuing Carr’s vivid conversation with the foundations of modern drama, it casts a critical eye on fate, power and the cost of defiance. Audiences can witness both plays back-to-back for one epic theatre experience, or view each play as a standalone story. Play One is called The Boy and is inspired by Oedipus Rex. We meet Oedipus and his family at the height of their powers before things begin to unravel. Play Two is called The God and His Daughter and is inspired by Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, exploring the consequences that continue into the next generation.
BÁN, written by Carys D. Coburn and directed by Claire O’Reilly
An Abbey Theatre production
Tuesday, 30th September – Saturday, 8th November
BÁN is a faithful but not close reworking of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. Like the sisters at its heart – bound tightly, neither open nor tender, mourning their father, surveilled by their mother. They long for escape, power, the local eligible bachelor. The question isn’t who can have which, it’s can any of them have any? BÁN isn’t simply mapping Franco’s Spain onto de Valera’s Ireland – Catholic Fascism = Catholic Fascism = duh. It’s speaking to anyone anywhere who denial kept alive, but who then wished it hadn’t. (Not exclusively Irish, but VERY Irish.) Raw and raucous; dark but not unduly despairing; loving but not unduly merciful, BÁN was nominated for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize earlier this year.
I FALL DOWN: A Restoration Comedy
A co-production between Gina Moxley, the Abbey Theatre, The Everyman, Once Off Productions and Department of Drama Trinity College Dublin
Thursday, 25th September – Sunday, 5th October
In this riotous ‘restoration comedy’, ex art student Gina Moxley, enflamed by women’s erasure in the prescribed history of art and the omission of female genitalia in classical statuary, enlists the audience in her brazen attempt to right these wrongs and correct the received history. This punk and fearlessly feminist show begins with a lecture, segues into an operatic promenade, travels to Florence courtesy of contemporary dance and finally arrives at a clay modelling workshop where audiences get a chance to release their inner artist.
Complaining For Good – Activism, Feminism, and How to Affect Change
Tuesday, 7th October at 12.30pm on the Abbey Stage
Sarah Durcan will speak on WTF HAPPENED: #WakingTheFeminists and the Movement that Changed Irish Theatre, followed by a lecture from Sara Ahmed on No is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining. Ahmed will examine the anatomy of a complaint, drawing on diverse testimonies to show how complaint can foster collective action and better working environments. A panel discussion with Durcan, Ahmed, and Catriona Crowe, chaired by Emma Dabiri, will follow, addressing the role of complaint, avoiding activist burnout, and sustaining meaningful change.
The Abbey Theatre gratefully acknowledges the support of
The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
The Department for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
