Sanctuary is a series of 26 ultra-short stories of asylum and refuge in Ireland, being shown in rotation before features in the IFI this month. The stories are all based on interviews I’ve done with people seeking asylum, and were performed by a collection of well known and emerging actors and writers.

‘Terminus’ is back at the Peacock in Dublin. This article was first published in the Sunday Tribune on January 13, 2008. It is six hours before Mark O’Rowe’s play, ‘Terminus’, opens in New York. The cast are doing the technical rehearsal. They’ve never been in the theatre before. Eileen Walsh is standing in a dim… read more +

In Sam Shepard’s ‘Ages of the Moon’, not a lot happens. Two men drink, sitting on a porch. Nobody else comes along. One of them leaves, briefly. Most of what they talk about is objectively meaningless: rambling musings on life, alcohol, women; shared memories of past misadventures. A fan hums above them erratically, till one… read more +

Michael Keegan Dolan has made some of the most provocative and inspiring work on the Irish stage in the last 10 years. But his next production is a ballet at, bizarrely, the English National Opera. So has Dolan abandoned the theatre? And has he abandoned Ireland? Dolan is possibly the most significant innovator to have… read more +

Caleb Crain is an American writer who keeps an elegant blog at www.steamthing.com. At the end of June, he wrote a review of a new book by the essayist Alain de Botton for the New York Times. The day after the review came out, a long comment was posted on Crain’s blog by a reader,… read more +

How would you describe the theatre to a child who had never been? Would you start with the building? “It’s big and dark, and everybody’s quiet.” Or perhaps with the performers? “The actors wear make up and costumes, and do funny things on stage.” You’d probably explain the rules (or the rituals): “Everybody’s quiet. We… read more +

“There is a part of me,” says Alan Gilsenan, “that is slightly repelled by the theatre.” Gilsenan is a filmmaker. He made his name with an angry young man’s documentary about 1980s Ireland, ‘The Road to God Knows Where’; his more recent documentary series, such as ‘The Asylum’ and ‘The Hospice’, have been groundbreaking treatments… read more +

Earlier this summer I received an invite from the Israeli Embassy to spend a week in Israel viewing the best of its theatre. It didn’t suit; but in any case, I decided that I wouldn’t have gone, and wrote to explain why. I’ve never been to the Middle East and have no first-hand experience of… read more +

The theatre’s publicist didn’t know what was going on. “It’s kind of a secret,” she said, awkwardly. I turned up anyway. It was a night last July. The theatre was packed. The average age in the audience seemed about 25. A young woman stood up on the stage and took up a microphone. She told… read more +

Michael Frayn was a spectacularly unsuccessful playwright. The Cambridge Footlights has for years provided British comedy with a litany of its brightest stars, from the Monty Python team to Fry and Laurie. In his final year at Cambridge, Frayn got the opportunity to write most of the Footlights annual Spring Revue. Normally, the Revue is… read more +