Women’s Prize for Playwriting Nominee 2025
A Straw House (In Development)
A Straw House began with seed funding from The Arts Council in 2020, through the Axis Theatre Ballymun. After a break for childcare, it was developed further with support from Then This Theatre and Axis Theatre Ballymun, and was part of the Dublin Theatre Festival playreadings in 2024.
The script was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2025.
A mother checks into a bedsit with her daughter. It’s a stop gap, a temporary safe haven until she can figure out what to do and where to go next. But how safe are they, really? And why is it getting harder and harder to leave? This new play blends magical realism and horror.
Reading Cast and Crew:
Cast: Maeve Fitzgerald, Shannon O’Doherty & Manus Halligan
Director / Dramaturg: Aoife Spillane-Hinks
Life is sweet. Good job. Pretty wife. A nice house in the suburbs. Shame about the past, creeping up behind you…
Charlotte is back on track, thanks to support from her steadfast husband, Malcolm, and son, Evan. She thinks she’s found another lifeline in her new friend, Shane. But Shane knows more about her idyllic life than she realises. And just how to destroy it.
The Harvest is a tense thriller about second chances and second lives. What we do when we have them, and what we might do to take them from others.
“The world knows about me. It knows what I did and it doesn’t care anymore. But what about you? What about what you’ve done?”
Stewart Parker Playwriting Award Nominee
The Harvest
2019 Cast and Crew
Director: Matthew Ralli
Cast: Marcus Lamb, John Morton, Melissa Nolan, Stephen O'Leary.
Set Design: Lisa Krugel
Lighting Design: John Crudden
Sound Design: Dylan Tonge Jones
Dramaturgy: Pamela McQueen
Photography: Al Craig
Written by Charles Dickens in 1866, this classic ghost story tells of a lone Signalman haunted by visions of a terrifying spectre.
Brought to life for a new audience in 1976 when filmed for the BBC as part of their Ghost Stories for Christmas series, this adaptation expands on the relationship between The Gentleman and The Signalman, exploring the classic tale through a modern lens, focusing on class, paranoia and mental health, while retaining the original’s pervading sense of dread.
Adapted from Charles Dickens’ Short Story
The Signalman
2019 Cast and Crew
Director: Matthew Ralli
Cast: Marcus Lamb & Daniel Reardon
Set Design: Lisa Krugel
Lighting Design: Paul Doran
Sound Design: Carl Kennedy
Costume Design: Barbara Ryan
Stage Management: Céin Sookram & Shannon Cowen
Overtime
Sunday Independent Theatre Highlight
John is having a bad night. Fact is, he’s been having a bad year. Pulling in extra shifts, staying late, in the office 24/7... But the work just keeps piling up and the job is getting tougher and tougher. And all the while that voice is telling him that maybe it’s him. Maybe he’s just not good enough.
Because, all of this wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for Frank. Frank; the face and name behind that voice. Frank, ever constant, always there. Watching on. Waiting.
But for all of John’s problems, if he let’s him and if he listens...Frank just might have a solution.
Overtime began its life as part of The New Theatre’s week of November Playreadings in 2011. Following the success of the reading and the subsequent positive feedback, it was brought back for two sold out, critically acclaimed runs in 2012 & 2013.
2012 Cast and Crew
Director: Caroline FitzGerald
Stage Manager: Fiona Keller
Lighting Design: John Crudden
Set Design: Phillipa Kavanagh
Sound Design: Shane Fitzmaurice
Music (composition and performance): Paul Simon McCarthy