Push Forward Festival – Theatre Day 3

Push Forward Festival at The New Theatre – Day #3

Date: Saturday December 3rd 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 final night of Theatre performances will be A Cottage in West Wicklow, 2022 by Philip St John, Piglet by Ultan Pringle, and Yule-ogy by Lesley Conroy.

A Cottage in West Wicklow, 2022

Written by Philip St John

Consultant Director – Matthew Ralli

Performed by Sinéad Keegan

‘Thanks for calling, but I’m afraid I have departed this world. Looking forward to talking with you when I return…’

Leaving her phone and laptop at home, Ruth has fled to deepest west Wicklow to work on her difficult second novel. Like her first, it’s a ghost story. Ruth doesn’t believe in ghosts, but everyone else in the nearby village seems to believe her rented cottage is a haunt…

Will the ‘ghost’ prove a distraction to an already frazzled mind, or might it lead Ruth into interesting, if dangerous, territory?

Philip St John grew up in Dun Laoghaire. He has written five plays. The first, Maxine, won The International Playwright Forum award and was performed in Bremerhaven and Manilla (2012). The Sylvia was staged in Smock Alley (2013) and toured Italy in translation (2017-2019). Temptress ran at The New Theatre in 2015 and was restaged in 2019. An American production company has bought the film rights.

Philip is currently working on a number of Arts Council funded theatre and fiction projects,

including the ghost story play The Occupant, and The People, a fairy story set in the world of

conspiracy theory.

Sinéad Keegan is a Dublin based actress. Most recent theatre credits include Bloody Yesterday (Deirdre Kinahan) which will go on tour 2022/2023. Sinéad also starred in The Day of The Zebra (Neil Flynn) alongside Stephen Jones and Kieran Roche. Screen credits include Fate: The Winx Saga (Netflix) and The Doireann Project (RTÉ). She is a graduate of the Full-Time Professional Actor Training Programme at The Gaiety School of Acting (2019) where she was awarded the Gaiety Theatre Bursary in 2018.

Piglet

Written by Ultan Pringle

Performed by Lora Hartin

Halfway through her third year in college, Mercy Munroe disappears. A year and a half later her onetime best friends Clara & Siobhan stop off in The Chip Pan Diner & Grill for a cappuccino or “like some avocado toast or whatever” on their way to Clara’s family’s holiday home in Connemara. 

Here they come face to face with Mercy Munroe who is now working as a waitress and fond of doing a Jennifer Coolidge impression. As Mercy takes their order, chaos and murderous thoughts erupt between the three one-time-best-friends. Brunch will never be the same again. 

Ultan Pringle is an actor and writer from Donegal. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. His recent writing credits include: It Is Good We Are Dreaming (The New Theatre), Marmalade Row (An Grianan Theatre & The New Theatre), Children (Scene & Heard Festival, Smock Alley Theatre, 2022), School House Rules (Balor Arts Centre) & Chicken Nugget (Big Fish Theatre). His play Lavender Hill was long listed for the The Bruntwood Prize For Playwriting 2022. Ultan is also a founding member of LemonSoap Productions and eats too many biscuits. 

Lora Hartin is an actor and theatre maker from Dublin. A graduate of Trinity College, her recent theatre credits include War and Peace (Gift Horse Theatre), Window a World (Dublin Theatre Festival), Spear (Dublin Fringe Festival), and It Is Good, We Are Dreaming (The New Theatre). Often collaborating with Fishamble Theatre company, Lora co-produced her first play with the company ‘AFTER THE STORM’ in the O’Reilly Theatre in 2020. She enjoys producing auto-biographical work, as well as making plays about sick, deranged women, neither of which have any relation.

Yule-ogy

Written by Lesley Conroy

Consultant Director – Mags Keohane

Performed by Eva-Jane Gaffney

Thank you – Tom Gaffney and Ruby Connolly

Following the sudden death of an estranged family member, Helen is tasked with writing the eulogy. As she pieces together memories from the past, both good and bad, it’s the remembrance of a chance meeting with the recently departed one cold December night that shines brightest in her mind.

Lesley Conroy is an IFTA award nominated actor and writer for theatre and screen.

Her monologue Cleaner was the 2020 Scripts Ireland Competition winner. Adapted for screen under Screen Ireland/Bow Street Academy’s Actor as Creator scheme it has won multiple awards including Best Cork Short at the 66th Cork International Film Festival and Jury Special Mention at Catalyst International Film Festival. It’s currently available to view on RTÉ player.

As winner of Cork Midsummer Festival Jane Anne Rothwell award she is developing a full length play my connection is unstable with support from the Arts Council, Pavilion Theatre and dlr Mill Theatre. She is currently writing a play for the Mill Youth Theatre due to be staged in early 2023. Her short screenplay Sliabh Luachra – a change of heart was shortlisted for the Kerry Short Film Bursary and Físín, and was a finalist in Waterford Film Festival screenplay competition.

Eva-Jane Gaffney is an actor from Dublin. Screen credits include Sing Street, Kin, Wastewater, Can’t Cope Won’t Cope and Éirí Amach Amú. Theatre credits include The Twenty Club, HEROIN and Danny & Chantelle (Still Here). Eva-Jane toured with the play Rapids in 2019, a film adaptation entitled How to Tell A Secret is set for release later this year. Eva-Jane is a fluent Irish speaker.