Upcoming Nightlight: Origin Theatre Company Artistic Director George C Heslin In association with NYU Glucksman Ireland House Presents The 6th Annual Mondays of May Play Reading Series
We attended last week, and recommended that performance:
At
NYU Glucksman Ireland House
1 Washington Mews
Bet Washington Square North and 8th St
RSVP required 212-253-8300
Free Event
Wine reception to follow
Monday May 3rd 7pm
Four Last Things
By Lisa Tierney Keogh
Directed by Chris Henry
Janey is dropping out. Of college, of friends, of life. Stuck on her family farm, yearning for Dublin, she wants to swap the green fields for a concrete jungle and the endless quiet for a ceaseless noise. With a father she can’t talk to, and a dog that can’t talk back to her, Janey bows out and chooses no to life. This is an emotionally charged journey through the last days of a young woman’s battle with herself. An achingly true play that vigorously explores our most secret beliefs and the Four Last Things that are death, judgment, heaven and hell.
Lisa Tierney Keogh has trained with the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York, The Second City and Screen Training Ireland. Lisa won the Irish Times Theatre Awards Bursary and was nominated for the Stewart Parker Trust/BBC New Writing Award, Ireland’s most prestigious new writing award. Lisa has received writing bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council, Screen Training Ireland and The Peggy Ramsay Foundation. In 2009, she was a finalist for the BBC Tony Doyle Award and was a member of the inaugural New Playwrights Programme at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Her sixth stage play, Four Last Things, sold out its premiere run at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2009 and was nominated for four Fringe Festival Awards including Best New Play and Best Production. Lisa is currently working on a new play for the Abbey Theatre, Ireland.
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Monday May 10th 7pm
Crossing The Bar
By Lucy Gough
Directed by Portia Kreiger
When a despairing young prisoner on remand encounters a fellow teenager - a medieval anchorite, or incarcerated nun. Together, they seek release from doing time, and from time itself. Characterized by the wordplay, neologisms and dark wit that won Welsh playwright Gough several awards and commissions in the United Kingdom, Crossing The Bar is both memorable and timeless.
Lucy Gough has been writing plays since 1986. She was a finalist for both the John Whiting Award and BBC Wales Writer of the Year Award (1994) with her play Crossing The Bar. Her first BBC broadcast was in 1994 with Our Lady of Shadows (BBC Radio 3). Since then she has had a play of the week on the BBC World Service and has had five plays on BBC Radio 4; Gryfhead, The Red Room, The Mermaids Tail and Judith Beheading Holofernes and The Raft. Her Radio dramatization of Wuthering Heights for BBC Radio 4 was broadcast as the classic serial in Woman's Hour in July 2003. Mapping the Soul was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2005. Her work was first presented by Origin Theatre Company in 2008, when her play GRYF/HEAD was read in our Mondays of May series.
Monday May 17th 7pm
2010 Stewart Parker Award Winning Play-Best Irish Play
The Death of Harry Leon
By Conall Quinn
Directed by Matt Torney
Dublin, the 1930s. Harry Leon, a poet, is a man at ease with himself and the world around him. Though born a Jew and of Russian ancestry, Harry considers himself very much Irish first and Jewish second.
But the world is changing. Adolf Hitler is in power in Germany and anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. In Ireland, sinister forces are emerging from the shadows that will propel Leon to confront the power of his own words and his own Jewish identity.
The Death of Harry Leon is the story of a man’s struggle with his country, his past and with himself.
Conall Quinn’s plays include Miss Canary Islands 1936, produced by the Focus theatre, 2002, The Unfortunate Machine-Gunning of Anwar Sadat, CoalFace theatre company, 2005 (nominated for a Fringe First award), Spider and the Lily, commissioned by the Abbey, received a public reading in the Peacock theatre in 2007 and is currently a work in progress. He is also working on a play for Upstate theatre company due to produced in 2009. The Death of Harry Leon was originally commissioned by the Abbey Theatre in 2004.
Monday May 24th 7pm
The Measurements of a Murderer
by Lucy Tyler
Directed by David Sullivan
The stark world of a women’s prison. The Warden’s up to his neck in allegations. A governmental superior, the Innovator swoops in to sort things out. A beauty pageant for the female inmates seems like the only solution. The sure winner is inmate and local God, Natalya. But with a first prize of freedom, no inmate can resist entering, except one. Nona doesn’t want to leave prison, or at least doesn’t want to leave without Ana. But Ana has her own plans. A misunderstanding of Natalya’s commandments, as well as Ana’s rejection leads Nona to drastically break the rules, and lose and gain everything...The Measurements of a Murderer centres on the real life practice of the Beauty Pageant in Prisons, as is practised in Russia and Siberia.
Lucy Tyler is a playwright and poet. Currently, she is completing the prestigious MPhil playwriting programme at Birmingham University. Her plays include The Measurements of a Murderer (The Antigone Project, 2010; Staged Reading at Hampstead Theatre 2009), Claudia Schiffer’s Mind (Theatre Absolute, 2010), The Operators (The Georgetown Theatre Company, 2010), and Saviours. Her new play Misplaced Affections, about the Spanish Civil War is currently in development and will receive its public debut in June 2010.
