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.

Some more online radio: this is an online audio archive I developed for FLAC (the Free Legal Advice Centres). It features an introductory podcast and clips from interviews with a series of legal luminaries involved in FLAC’s first 40 years.

Online now: my short radio documentary on this year’s local elections, for The Curious Ear on Radio One. The blurb: In May 2009, Colin Murphy hit the roads of Ireland on the campaign trail with some of the 40 immigrants who ran in the local elections. In Dublin, Limerick, Monaghan and Donegal, he talked to… read more +

‘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 +

I wrote this piece on the run-up to the Lisbon campaign for Prospect Magazine in London, on Cóir and Ireland’s new culture wars.

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 +

In the run up to the local elections, I travelled around the country talking to immigrant candidates. This podcast, for FOMACS and Le Monde Diplomatique, is one of the results. New voices in Irish politics