Scripts, Ireland's playwriting festival, returning to Offaly with exciting new plays

SCRIPTS, Ireland’s Playwriting Festival is returning to Birr this month with a number of exciting vibrant new Plays.
Scripts is marking its 11th annual outing on 10–13 July.
The festival is a dynamic celebration of contemporary Irish theatre, dedicated to nurturing and showcasing the finest new plays from emerging and established playwrights.
Set in an ideal setting for an arts festival, the beautiful Birr Theatre and a picturesque, Georgian town (called “a haven of Georgian elegance and boutique chic”) Scripts brings together playwrights, directors, actors and producers to develop and present riveting new works for stage.
Each year the Festival selects three emerging writers (this year from over 130 submissions) for a week of intensive mentorship (led by mentor Eugene O’Brien) and culminates in live staged readings of their new plays.

Programme Highlights
The 2025 lineup features a mix of professional productions, workshops and talks. Highlights include:
New Irish Plays: Live readings of contemporary scripts by acclaimed writers – for example, No Romance: A Desperate Business by Nancy Harris (The Dry – RTE); Counting Swans by Conor Montague (a previous Scripts alumnus); and The 3:30 at Cheltenham by Kenneth Hudson. All performances take place in the Birr Theatre & Arts Centre, the festival hub.

Workshops & Talks
Each day features industry-led workshops and panels. These include playwriting classes and practice-based sessions with theatre professionals such as Noelle Brown (theatre as a platform for change), Rían Smith from The Abbey Theatre (Writing Your Voice), and Conor Montague (The Play Express).
There is also a special morning discussion with Colm O’Callaghan (Gate Theatre’s co-CEO) on producing new work.

Emerging Playwrights
A record 132 scripts were submitted for this year’s festival, which goes to show that writing for the stage is alive and well in Ireland. Three writers – Róisín Daly, James Peaty and Lisa Walsh – were selected by the festival’s reading panel to attend a week of mentoring, intensive writing (and rewriting, and rewriting some more…) & development. Their new plays will be showcased in the finale event.

Grand Finale – Nurtured New Works
On Sunday 13 July at 4pm (in Birr Theatre & Arts Centre), the festival culminates in Nurtured New Works, a staged-reading of the plays from the 3 selected playwrights. After a week of mentoring, editing and directing, the three scripts are brought “from page to stage” under the direction of Jim Culleton (artistic director of Fishamble The New Play Company), and performed by some of Ireland’s leading actors (Hilda Fay, Darragh O’Toole, Cillian Lenaghan and Robert Sheehan).

Some of the plays
“No Romance - A Desperate Business.”
Thursday July 10 at 8pm Birr Theatre.
An original play from Nancy Harris (The Dry - RTE).
“Why all of a sudden does everybody have to know everything about each other? When did we decide that unless we divulge every stupid thought we have, every minute of the day, that we’re not living a proper life?”
A funeral home in Dublin. Carmel and Joe have arrived early to Joe’s mother’s wake. After twenty-four years together, they think they know each other inside out. But while they’re here to bury their dead, they begin to uncover secrets, lies and fantasies that they’ve kept hidden from each other.
Are we entitled to our own private life, secret even from those closest to us? Or in this age of curated online lives and fake news, is honesty all we have?
“Counting Swans” by Conor Montague.
Friday 11 July, 8pm
€18 (plus booking fee)
Birr Theatre & Arts Centre
Would you kill for a friend? Would you kill your best friend? Do you have what it takes?
A tragi-comic dialogue from award-winning playwright, Conor Montague, which interrogates societal attitudes towards care for the terminally ill though the personal trauma of two lifelong friends. “Life isn’t a game of hurling.”
Former All-Star hurler, Martin ‘The Butcher’ Molloy, is defined by courage, weakened by loss, haunted by failure. The untimely death of his wife forces confrontation with an old friend and inspires a journey through the dark recesses of grief in search of answers, forgiveness and a new beginning.
Counting Swans descends deep into the dark to retrieve slivers of light from within the despair of a broken hero. The nature of love, friendship, illness, courage and assisted suicide are just some of the topics meditated upon over the course of a dialogue that mixes tears with laughter, despondency with hope, and croquet with hurling.
"Conor Montague’s tightly crafted drama sets a benchmark in creating stimulating, almost filmic drama for the stage". Paul Vale (The Stage, UK)
Age Suitability: Parental guidance advised – contains some strong language. Show duration 70 mins no interval.
Graduate of the MA in Writing from NUIG and Scripts alumni, Conor Montague is currently working in London where he is co-director of London Writers Eclective and resident playwright at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith.
Followed by Q&A.

More Information
For more information, reviews or interview requests, please contact the Scripts Festival press office (Gildas Le Pallec- Gildas@birrtheatre.com - 057 9122893) or visit the website www.scriptsireland.com.