Mainstream
Written by Rosaleen McDonagh Directed by Jim Culleton
We share a history, we share a memory and they both share my heart.
It’s that time of the year. A time that Eoin, Mary Anne and Jack all remember. They have all agreed to take part in a documentary. They have all lied to each other about what they are going to say on camera.
Project Arts Centre and the Olivier Award-winning Fishamble: The New Play Company present a play by Rosaleen McDonagh about truth, lies and the mainstreaming of Travellers with disabilities.
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Reviews
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‘Mainstream is hugely ambitious…almost Shavian in its dialectic complexity…Mainstream crawl[s] into your soul: its anger stabs deep into the audience, and makes for a harrowing, deeply affecting 85 minutes ’
Sunday Independent -
‘Heart-breakingly brilliant…one of the highlights of McDonagh’s ambitious script is its giving voice to the confrontation between the traveller male and traveller woman, realised in a gripping scene between Mary-Anne and Jack. A scene that transcends, whilst simultaneously embracing, traveller culture, lodging the experience firmly in the universally human… director Jim Culleton does a sterling job with his cast of traveller, settled and disabled actors… a tale that needs to be heard ’
The Arts Review
Cast
Creative Team
Rosaleen McDonagh
Rosaleen McDonagh is a writer, playwright, performer and a member of Aosdána. Her plays include The Baby Doll Project, She’s Not Mine, Rings, The Prettiest Proud Boy and Mainstream. Her most recent commissions were Walls and Windows, followed by Backbone for the Abbey Theatre and is commissioned by Pavee Point to write Context, which loosely documents the forty-year history of Pavee Point. She is part of the Navigator Series by Fishamble for 2026. She is the author of Unsettled (Skein Press, 2021) and Contentious Spaces (Skein Press, 2026). Rosaleen holds a BA, two MPhils from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from Northumbria University. She was reappointed as a Human Rights Commissioner in June 2025. Rosaleen is a member of the Arts Council.
Productions
Jim Culleton
Jim Culleton is the Artistic Director of Fishamble: The New Play Company, for which he has directed productions on tour throughout Ireland, UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. His productions for Fishamble have won Olivier, The Stage, Scotsman Fringe First, and Irish Times Best Director awards.
Jim has also directed for the Abbey, the Gaiety, the Belgrade, 7:84 Scotland, Project, Amharclann de hÍde, Tinderbox, Passion Machine, the Ark, Second Age, Dundee Rep, CoisCéim/Crash Ensemble/GIAF, Frontline Defenders, Amnesty International, Little Museum of Dublin, Fighting Words, Soho Theatre, Scripts Festival, and Baptiste Programme. He has directed audio plays for Audible, BBC, RTÉ Radio 1, and RTÉ lyric fm. He has directed for Vessel and APA (Australia), TNL (Canada), Solas Nua, Mosaic, and Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Odyssey (LA), Origin, Irish Arts Center, New Dramatists, and 59E59 (Off-Broadway), as well as for Trafalgar Theatre Productions on the West End, and IAC/Symphony Space on Broadway. Jim has taught for NYU, NUI, GSA, Uversity, the Lir, Villanova, Notre Dame, UM, UMD, JNU, and TCD.
Productions
Sarah Jane Shiels
Sarah Jane is a lighting designer whose interest in light began as a member of Dublin Youth Theatre. She collaborates with a wide range of companies across theatre, dance, opera, and installation.
Upcoming productions include Wake (THISISPOPBABY), La Voix humaine, Bluebeard’s Castle and Carousel (Wermland Opera, Karlstad, Sweden).
Recent credits include Disco Pigs, directed by Enda Walsh, at the Everyman Theatre, Cork; Meredith (Gate Theatre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival); Pretty Vacant (Performance Corporation); Kafka’s Doll (Theatre Lovett); Saoirse (An Taibhdhearc); The Whiteheaded Boy (Abbey Theatre); Cunning Little Vixen (Irish National Opera); Dénouement and Our New Girl (Lyric Theatre, Belfast); The Mirror Stage (Brokentalkers); Octopus Children (THISISPOPBABY); L’elisir d’amore (Irish National Opera); The Borrowers (Gate Theatre).
Other projects include This Shit Happens All The Time (Lyric Theatre); Conversations After Sex (THISISPOPBABY); All the Angels (Rough Magic); Book of Names (ANU); Hansel and Gretel (INO, Theatre Lovett and the Abbey Theatre); This Hostel Life (INO); The Veiled One (Junk Ensemble); Children of the Sun (Rough Magic and the Abbey Theatre); A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Collapsing Horse).
Productions
Denis Clohessy
Denis has previously worked with The Abbey Theatre, The Gate Theatre, Fishamble, Rough Magic, CoisCéim, Junk Ensemble, Corn Exchange, Northlight Theatre, Chicago and Beijing Children’s Art Theatre. He won the Irish Times theatre award for Best Soundscape in 2011 and 2019. He was also a nominee in 2015 for Junk Ensemble and Brokentalker’s ‘It Folds’. Denis was an associate artist with the Abbey in 2008 and was a participant on Rough Magic’s ADVANCE programme in 2012.
Composition for Film and Television includes the feature films One Night In Millstreet (Fastnet Films) Older than Ireland (Snack box Films), His and Hers (Venom Film), The Irish Pub (Atom Films) and the animation series Will Sliney’s Storytellers (Fastnet Films).