Push Forward Festival at The New Theatre – Day #1
Date: Thursday December 1st from 6pm.
Tickets €10
Join us at The New Theatre and Connolly Books for an evening of new short play performances by a number of Ireland’s leading writers and performers. Our first night of Theatre performances will be The Outsider by Tara Maria Lovett and Sing it Slantways by Jack Harte.
The Outsider
Written by Tara Maria Lovett
Performed by Amy O’Dwyer
Sister Lucia is a Carmelite nun. The Mother Superior orders her to go outside to deliver the consecrated hosts to a nursing home. There is no one else to do it. She lives in a world of elderly women.
Her world is turned upside down by those she meets and she commits an unforgivable sin. She keeps her sin secret.
Now when she looks out her cell window the world outside is a constant reminder of what she allowed to happen and what she allowed herself to dream.
Tara Maria Lovett is a Cavan based playwright. Literary awards include Fingal Scribe
Playwriting Award in 2000 for her one-act piece The Shape, the O.Z. Whitehead Playwriting Competition for Action Man (2001), the Sean Dunne Literary Award for The Hen House
(2002) and the Eamon Keane award for best full-length play for The Piano Lesson (Listowel Writers Week, 2002).
Professional productions include The Shape and WatchDog focus theatre 2001, The Suck in
The Project 2001, The Call in the crypt Dublin Castle 2002 shortlisted for an Irish Times Theatre Award that year, and The Mass Rock in Smock Alley in 2012. The Tide premiered in The New Theatre in September 2019. New play development for the New Theatre in 2019 with Black is the colour New play reading for Culture night in collaboration with Cavan county Museum 2020, resulting in the production of The Whispering Chair with Livin’ dread theatre in 2022.
Amy O’Dwyer graduated with a distinction from the London School of Musical Theatre, and studied a BA in Drama and Theatre at Trinity College Dublin. When not acting, she works as a producer with The Podcast Studios, and has worked in radio as a news reader and presenter. Recent credits with The New Theatre include Michael and Kitty, Jackie, The Moving Bridge, and Ledwidge. Other recent credits include A Little Heart (Smock Alley), 24 Hour Plays (Abbey Theatre), Fair City (RTE), Making Dad’s Army (BBC) and Peter Pan (Gaiety Theatre).
Sing it Slantways
Written by Jack Harte
Performed by Darina Gallagher
Stella has a dilemma. Her ex-best-friend, Chrissie, is marrying her ex-boyfriend, Joe.
They would both love for Stella to sing at their wedding. She recognises this invitation from Chrissie as no more than power play. But how does she respond?
Refuse, and she will give Chrissie the satisfaction of thinking that she is still upset at the loss of Joe. Accept, and Chrissie will enjoy the satisfaction of feeling she has managed to humiliate her further. But all is not as it seems, and revenge can cut all the deeper if the jab is delivered slantways.
Jack Harte’s novels and short stories have been published in 13 languages. As a playwright, he made his debut in 2015 with Language of the Mute in The New Theatre. It toured the following year to many of the major theatres around Ireland. This was followed by The Mysterious History of Things (Viking Theatre, 2016) and Lugh and Balor – performed in
Greek translation at the Ancient Theatre of Maroneia and the Theatre of Komotini in Greece, also in 2016. Killing Grandad, premiered in The New Theatre in March 2020. The Pleasureometer, a short play, was streamed online as part of The New Theatre’s Fight Back Festival in 2020, and another, Outside the Club of Culture, was presented at the Theatre’s Push Forward Festival in July, 2021. The Laughing Boy, his play based on Brendan Behan’s song of the same name which became the anthem of the Left in Greece, was produced at The New Theatre in 2021 and revived in 2022, before moving to London for performances at the Irish Cultural Centre.
Darina Gallagher is a graduate of the Samuel Beckett Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies. She has worked as a theatre director, actor and singer with many companies including Benbo Productions, Blue Raincoat Theatre Company, City Theatre Company, About Face Theatre and Bewley’s Cafe Theatre. For the last 12 years, she has been creating award-winning music-theatre productions with Sinead Murphy based on the music and literature of James Joyce and WB Yeats including Misses Liffey, A Portrait of the Nation and Cafe Chantant. For AboutFace, she played Sally in the critically acclaimed The Gods of the Ozarks and multiple roles as part of their Newvember new writing series. Most recently she played Meadhbh in The Battle of Kildare Place for Bewley’s Café Theatre.
Cast and Creatives
Amy O’Dwyer by City Headshots Dublin
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