Offaly's Playwriting Festival hums with positivity

SCRIPTS, Ireland's Playwriting Festival, which is held in Birr every July was humming with positive vibes and plaudits during the four days of its running time last week.
This was Scripts 11th annual outing and it featured a number of exciting, vibrant new Plays. Once again the festival was a dynamic celebration of contemporary Irish theatre, dedicated to nurturing and showcasing the finest new plays from emerging and established playwrights.
The festival's Mentor is the celebrity playwright Eugene O'Brien (of Pure Mule and Eden fame), who every year receives high praise from the playwrights he works with, as he sets them the difficult task of reassembling their one act plays and burnishing them to the highest level that they can.
Another celebrity to grace this year's festival was the Portlaoise actor Robert Sheehan, who has enjoyed stratospheric levels of fame during his career (including starring in Love/Hate and The Umbrella Academy).
Angela Ryan Whyte of the Festival Organising Team said Birr has a special place in her heart and the town is an ideal setting for the festival. The picturesque Georgian streetscape forms a perfect backdrop to the plays and workshops.
Each year Scripts brings together playwrights, directors, actors and producers to develop and present new works for the stage. The Festival selected three emerging writers this year from over 130 submissions for a week of intensive mentorship by mentor Eugene O’Brien and culminated in live staged readings of their new plays on Sunday afternoon in Birr Theatre & Arts Centre.
The 2025 lineup featured a mixture of professional productions, workshops and talks. There were a number of new Irish Plays by acclaimed writers, such as “No Romance: A Desperate Business” by Nancy Harris; “Counting Swans” by Conor Montague (a previous Scripts alumnus); and “The 3:30 at Cheltenham” by Kenneth Hudson. All three performances of these new plays took place in the Birr Theatre & Arts Centre, the festival hub.
Each day featured industry-led workshops and panels. These included playwriting classes and practice-based sessions with theatre professionals such as Noelle Brown, Rían Smith from The Abbey Theatre, and Conor Montague (The Play Express). There was also a special morning discussion with Colm O’Callaghan (Gate Theatre’s co-CEO and originally from Biirr) on producing new work.
Of the record 132 scripts submitted for this year’s festival, three writers – Róisín Daly (from Clare), James Peaty (from London) and Lisa Walsh (from Dublin) – were selected by the festival’s reading panel to attend a week of mentoring, intensive writing (and rewriting, and rewriting some more! Their new plays were showcased in the Festival Finale on Sunday afternoon - “Nurtured New Works.” Nurtured New Works is the beating heart of Scripts, where emerging voices are given space to grow, challenge and connect. Some of Ireland's leading actors, Hilda Fay, Darragh O'Toole, Cillian Lenaghan and Robert Sheehan performed the plays, doing an excellent job and bringing them vividly to life. Their accents, whether cockney or Dublin, were also top drawer. The plays were directed by Jim Culleton, the artistic director of Fishamble The New Play Company.
All three plays were of a very high standard. The first play was “Turn” by James Peaty which follows three Londoners on a fateful night, suffused with booze, sex, criminality, simmering tension and violence. With strong cockney accents and language liberally strewn with expletives, these three people, Harry, Jelly and Eliza, have a strong whiff of danger about them. A late night's drinking brings out their inner tensions in an explosion of violence, which leaves one of them on the floor, perhaps dead, perhaps not.
As the play progresses, our sympathy grows for the characters as we see that Harry and Jelly (who are brothers) came from a difficult family where the father was abusive. Their rough upbringing made it more difficult for them to go on the straight and narrow in their adult lives. Their lives are interwoven with drug addicts, prostitutes, criminals, alcoholics. As they recited their ugly and grim lines a piano played atonally in the background, which somehow seemed like a negative commentary on their lives.
Jelly has come for his €90,000 which Harry owes him. There's only €75,000 in the bag. A tense situation turns even tenser, the two brothers fight and Harry strangles Jelly. As a remorseful Harry weeps over his brother's body lying on the floor, fearing that he is dead, Eliza makes off with the bag of money. The play ends.
The second play was “Fanny Riot” by Lisa Walsh and features a middle-aged Dublin woman navigating the Dublin Riots on the 23rd of November, 2023. In the play Laura Kelly takes “a dreamy notion to go to a mad and beautiful book launch even though she doesn't speak Irish, a decision that has her trapped as the Dublin Riots erupt. As she walks home she encounters “violence, confusion, chaos, grief, love and ultimately hope.”
Laura was excellently performed by veteran actor Hilda Fay who delivers a powerful, emotional performance; a demanding monologue which switches from humour to fear to tears. Walking home from the book launch Laura notices that the atmosphere is awry in the city - “There's definitely a weird energy thing going on.” Young men, roaring and running, pass her, following by Gardaí. There are riot police, terrified women, aggressive, swearing men, burning vehicles. She rings home, which is in Ballymun, and her 22 year old son answers. He doesn't seem particularly bothered by her predicament. The play ends with her still in the midst of the chaos as her phone runs out of power.
The third and final play was “The Waves Have Ears Too” by Róisín Daly. In this the teenagers (perhaps 17 or 18) Paddy, Jack and Conor are discussing the amorous antics of their previous night out, specifically the events that occurred between Conor and a girl in their year, Niamh.
At the beginning Paddy and Jack are playing with a ball on the beach. Jack is talking about amorous conquests and it's obvious that what he's saying should be taken with a pinch of salt. Conor arrives and good-humoured banter ensues. Conor says the previous night he and Niamh made love in a field. He tells them that he left Niamh unconscious in the field. This sounds bad to Paddy and the atmosphere turns darker. Paddy keeps returning to Niamh, even though Conor tells him to drop the subject. The two friends have a verbal altercation. Conor leaves, angry. The play ends when Jack and Paddy see Niamh coming down to the beach and begin talking to the waves.
Summing up the festival Angela Ryan Whyte said things had “really clicked” this year. She said the three playwrights and Eugene developed an excellent rapport during the week, starting on Monday and running for seven days.
Eugene O'Brien praised the four actors who performed the Nurtured Works. He said Robert Sheehan was very down to earth and pleasant to have around. “He was sometimes mobbed on the streets, but he was always gracious and decent.”
As per tradition, Eugene asked the playwrights a number of questions in front of the audience, which proved illuminating and interesting. James Peaty described the week as “amazing, mad, intense, really encouraging. It was a really good environment. A great experience.”
Eugene praised director Jim Culleton who “has been a great friend to the festival.”
Lisa Walsh said she had witnessed the Dublin Riots in November 2023. She praised Eugene who encouraged her to write much more of the play about “the immediacy that was happening before Laura's eyes and her emotional reaction to it.” She said the week in Birr had been “a nurturing space. It has been a brilliant experience.”
Róisín Daly said her play was about alcohol and sexual abuse “and things being swept under the carpet.”
The two Judges said they had been “blown away” by the three plays and it was very hard to choose a winner. In the end, they declared Róisín Daly to be the winner. Her award will include a private consultation and script analysis with The Abbey Theatre and a scholarship for the Fishamble Playwriting Course. Róisín said Scripts had been “such an amazing festival. It has been such a pleasure.”

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