On Sunday 14th June, we had a spectacular day out with the winners of our #PlaysonaTrain competition with Irish Rail. We began the day with a playwriting workshop on a specially reserved carriage just for our workshop, then spent some time in beautiful Bray writing plays. Our Literary Manager Gavin Kostick read them on the train back to Pearse Station, where Irish Rail had kindly lent us a room to discuss the workshop in. The day ended with finished short plays in hand, which will be shared as part of our Fishamble Diaries series weekly. 

Workshop attendees:
Christopher Galvin
Maureen Penrose
Kevin Johnston
Emmaleene Leahy
Fiona Doris
Kate O'Connor
Eamonn O'Shiel
Saoirse Anton
Linda Butler

We were also delighted to welcome journalist Frank Coughlin who joined our workshop that day, and wrote a wonderful piece about it in the Irish Independent (Click HERE for the article). 

We would like to thank Irish Rail, who partnered with us to create #PlaysonaTrain and are Fishamble's Transport Partners for A PLAY FOR IRELAND.

Soho Theatre and Fishamble: The New Play Company present
DRIP FEED
Written and performed by KAREN COGAN
Directed by OONAGH MURPHY
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ASSEMBLY GEORGE SQUARE THEATRE, THE BUBBLE
London previews: Soho Theatre Upstairs, Fri 27 & Sat 28 Jul, 7pm
Edinburgh run: Wed 1 Aug – Sun 26 Aug (not 14), 2.30pm (60mins)
Press night: Fri 3 Aug, 2.30pm
London run: Mon 24 Sept – Sat 20 Oct, 7pm / Press Night: Wed 24 Sept, 7pm

Cork. 1998. Dancing on tables and 3am breakfast rolls. Brenda and her ferocious best pal are part of the city's furniture. What if you wake up hungover and broken on the wrong person’s doorstep, realise you’ve got it wrong, all wrong, and it might just be too late?

Shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award 2017 Drip Feed is a fast-paced infectiously dark comedy about the messiness of being youngish, female and queer in 1990s Ireland. Written and performed by Karen Cogan, this blistering new play about sexuality, stagnation and the messiness of growing up female and queer in Ireland receives its world premiere from Wed 1 – Sat 26 August at Assembly George Square Theatre as part of Soho Theatre’s Fringe season of the most vibrant new theatre, comedy and cabaret.

Taking us on an obsessive odyssey through Cork city in 1998 and the past Karen’s character Brenda cannot shake, Drip Feed speaks to so much of what is happening in society right now. It is a female-authored play, with a flawed and complex female protagonist. A queer coming of age story, set in the 1990s, Drip Feed presents the opportunity to consider the recent past, and ask how much has changed, but also how much hasn’t. Presented by Soho Theatre and Fishamble, and directed by Oonagh Murphy, Drip Feed will make its London premiere in September following its Edinburgh Fringe run.

Karen Cogan: “Drip Feed vomited out of me in a period of frustration. I felt bored with the conversations around female writers and characters. The phrase ‘strong women’ is used often. There’s no onus on men to be ‘strong characters’ at all times. They get to be flawed creatures. Women engage in a similar spectrum of messy behaviour. I wanted to write a complex queer woman who reflects the mortifying lengths we can all go to, to be loved, to be seen. She is ridiculous but honest.”

Karen trained as an actor at RADA. Her first play The Half of It won the prestigious Stewart Parker Award in 2018 after a sold out run in Dublin. The Half of It was nominated for 5 Fringe Awards and won the First Fortnight Award. Karen’s second play Drip Feed was shortlisted top 6 (from 1200 submissions) for the Verity Bargate Award in 2017 and has been optioned and commissioned for television development by Witchery Pictures. Oonagh Murphy recently directed the five-star Tribes at the Gate Theatre, as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
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“Fishamble is delighted to coproduce Drip Feed with Soho Theatre. Karen Cogan was recently chosen to take part in Fishamble’s nationwide play development initiative, A Play for Ireland. We are thrilled to support Karen, who has a vibrant, provocative and fiercely intelligent voice. She is a new force to be reckoned with in theatre, and we are proud to be connected with her, and her director, Oonagh Murphy.”
Jim Culleton, Artistic Director, Fishamble

​Would you like to be part of a unique playwriting course and over the course of a DART journey write your own mini play? Enter now to be part of Fishamble / Irish Rail’s ‘Plays on a Train’!
 
To celebrate the new partnership between Fishamble: The New Play Company and Irish Rail, a special playwriting experience will take place later this month and you could be part of it.
 
On Sunday June 24th one carriage of the DART leaving Connolly station that morning will be a dedicated playwriting space for 10 budding writers to learn more about how to craft a play and create their own.
 
The workshop will be directed by Gavin Kostick, Literary Manager of Ireland’s leading new play company, Fishamble and one of the country’s most produced playwrights. Gavin will help guide the participants in how to craft their mini play on the journey from Connolly to Bray. Once in Bray the group will take time for writing and gathering inspiration, and then make the DART journey back to Connolly Station, where they will take part in a feedback session at the station.
 
By the end of the day, the goal is for each of the 10 participants to have completed a very short play.
 
Irish Rail are the Transport Partners for Fishamble’s A PLAY FOR IRELAND from 2018-2019, which sees Fishamble: The New Play Company working with 33 playwrights and facilitators who will travel the island of Ireland for 27 workshops as 30 plays are developed, as part of Fishamble’s 30th year. At the end of the process Fishamble will produce and present one major Play For Ireland. A PLAY FOR IRELAND is run in partnership with six venues across the island of Ireland: Pavilion, Draíocht, The Everyman, Lime Tree Theatre/Belltable, Town Hall Theatre and Lyric Theatre.

As part of this partnership, Irish Rail would like to share the joy of playwriting with the public by hosting this playwriting course with a difference on the DART.

To enter this competition, all you have to do is like and comment on the competition on Facebook, or retweet and comment on Twitter, telling us how you would benefit from of a day’s playwriting workshop on a train. The competition runs online from Monday 11th - Thursday 14th June, and winners will be chosen at random and notified on Friday 15th June.
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Fishamble is an Olivier Award-winning, internationally acclaimed Irish theatre company, dedicated to the discovery, development and production of new work. This year the company celebrates 30 years of new plays in Ireland through its many productions and extensive development programme. Fishamble is at the heart of new writing for theatre in Ireland, typically supporting 60% of the writers of all new plays produced on the island of Ireland every year and has told the story of Ireland over 30 years through daring new plays and award-winning productions.
  
The Transport Partner for A PLAY FOR IRELAND is Irish Rail.
Tesco Finest is a supporter of A PLAY FOR IRELAND.  
 
#Fishamble30
 
Press information: Sinead O’Doherty, O’Doherty Communications t: 01 679 8476 / 086 259 1070   [email protected]