Lay Up Your Ends at 40

In the spirit of continuing our conversation about the histories of women's labour, we would like to flag that Dr Caroline Radcliffe (University of Birmingham) is coming to Queen's University Belfast on Monday 30th October to discuss her research and performance work around gendered labour in the 19th century. All are welcome!

https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/ael/events/QUBDramaGuestSpeakerSeries-DrCarolineRadcliffeUniversityofBirmingham.htm

Very excited to welcome thinkers and theatre-makers Charlotte Headrick, Ciara Murphy, Alex Coupe, and Ross Anderson-Doherty to QUB next week to share their thoughts on gender in Northern Irish theatre-making. Full programme below - please join us for a series of panels and talks and for what promises to be a very a rich discussion of the issues, past and present.

Symposium

Lay Up Your Ends at 40: A Celebration of Charabanc Theatre Company and Women’s Theatre in Northern Ireland
Brian Friel Theatre, QUB, Friday 27th October, 9.30-7pm

Through panels, discussions and talks with artists and academics and a staged reading of new work, as well as contributions from Charabanc members, this one-day symposium will discuss the significance of women’s contribution to theatre-making in the north, the legacies of Charabanc Theatre Company, and the future of women’s theatre-making in the region. The event will culminate in a performance lecture delivered by Carol Moore.

Booking: https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650234

Full schedule:
9.30-10.00 Registration

10.00-11.30 Welcome & Panel 1: Charabanc Theatre Company
Speakers:

Dr Charlotte Headrick - From Belfast to Corvallis: Directing the American Premiere of Martin Lynch's, Marie Jones's and Charabanc Theatre Company's Lay Up Your Ends
Dr Ciara Murphy – Double Jeopardy: Women’s Experience in the North of Ireland


11.30-12.00 Coffee break

12.00-13.00 Rehearsed Reading of a new play by Brenda Winter
Palmer, At Home with Typhoid Mary

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.15 Panel 2: Gender & Contemporary Theatre in NI
Speakers:

Dr Alex Coupe - Stitched Up: Feminist Theatre Making after Charabanc
Ross Anderson-Doherty - Doing All the Gender at Once: Just not on the mainstream stage


15.15-15.30 Comfort break

15.30-16.45 Artist Panel Chaired by Margaret Cronin
Speakers:Finn Kennedy, Zoe Seaton, Alice Malseed,
Gina Donnelly, and Raquel McKee

16.45-17.00 Comfort break

17.00-18.30 Performance Lecture & Q&A: ‘Watch Our lips, We’re
Speaking: Charabanc’s First Production, Lay Up Your
Ends’ Carol Moore, with Marie Jones & Brenda
Winter
Chair: Dr Charlotte Headrick

This event is run in collaboration with The Linen Hall Library and the Belfast International Arts Festival, and is supported by the Faculty Research Initiatives Fund and the Drama Department in the School of Arts, English & Languages at QUB, and the School of Arts & Humanities at Ulster University.

https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/ael/Research/ConferencesandSymposia/LayUpYourEndsat40/Lay_Up_Your_Ends_at_40_Schedule/

Image: Woman working in a flax spinning mill on York St, c.1940, courtesy of the Northern Ireland Historical Photographical Society page)

The Linen Hall is an invaluable source of theatrical material from Northern Ireland. To mark the fortieth anniversary of Charabanc’s landmark production, Lay Up Your Ends, we will host an exhibit of holdings from our Theatre and Performing Arts Archive, including items relating to Charabanc and other theatre companies and theatres, including The Lyric and Kabosh, as well as items from theatre-makers and playwrights.

🔗https://www.linenhall.com/event/lay-up-your-ends-40th-anniversary-exhibit/

Exhibition

LAY UP YOUR ENDS: 40TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBIT
9TH OCTOBER - 3RD NOVEMBER

The Linen Hall is an invaluable source of theatrical material from Northern Ireland. To mark the fortieth anniversary of Charabanc’s landmark production, Lay Up Your Ends, we will host an exhibit of holdings from our Theatre and Performing Arts Archive, including items relating to Charabanc and other theatre companies and theatres, including The Lyric and Kabosh, as well as items from theatre-makers and playwrights, such as Christina Reid, Jo Egan and Carol Moore.

https://www.linenhall.com/events/

Symposium

Lay Up Your Ends at 40: A Celebration of Charabanc Theatre Company and Women’s Theatre in Northern Ireland
Brian Friel Theatre, QUB, Friday 27th October, 9.30-7pm

Through panels, discussions and talks with artists and academics and a staged reading of new work, as well as contributions from Charabanc members, this one-day symposium will discuss the significance of women’s contribution to theatre-making in the north, the legacies of Charabanc Theatre Company, and the future of women’s theatre-making in the region. The event will culminate in a performance lecture delivered by Carol Moore.

Booking: https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650234

Full schedule:
9.30-10.00 Registration

10.00-11.30 Welcome & Panel 1: Charabanc Theatre Company
Speakers:

Dr Charlotte Headrick - From Belfast to Corvallis: Directing the American Premiere of Martin Lynch's, Marie Jones's and Charabanc Theatre Company's Lay Up Your Ends
Dr Ciara Murphy – Double Jeopardy: Women’s Experience in the North of Ireland


11.30-12.00 Coffee break

12.00-13.00 Rehearsed Reading of a new play by Brenda Winter
Palmer, At Home with Typhoid Mary

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.15 Panel 2: Gender & Contemporary Theatre in NI
Speakers:

Dr Alex Coupe - Stitched Up: Feminist Theatre Making after Charabanc
Ross Anderson-Doherty - Doing All the Gender at Once: Just not on the mainstream stage


15.15-15.30 Comfort break

15.30-16.45 Artist Panel Chaired by Margaret Cronin
Speakers:Finn Kennedy, Zoe Seaton, Alice Malseed,
Gina Donnelly, and Raquel McKee

16.45-17.00 Comfort break

17.00-18.30 Performance Lecture & Q&A: ‘Watch Our lips, We’re
Speaking: Charabanc’s First Production, Lay Up Your
Ends’ Carol Moore, with Marie Jones & Brenda
Winter
Chair: Dr Charlotte Headrick

This event is run in collaboration with The Linen Hall Library and the Belfast International Arts Festival, and is supported by the Faculty Research Initiatives Fund and the Drama Department in the School of Arts, English & Languages at QUB, and the School of Arts & Humanities at Ulster University.

https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/ael/Research/ConferencesandSymposia/LayUpYourEndsat40/Lay_Up_Your_Ends_at_40_Schedule/

Image: Woman working in a flax spinning mill on York St, c.1940, courtesy of the Northern Ireland Historical Photographical Society page)

‘Watch Our lips, We’re Speaking: Charabanc’s First Production, Lay Up Your Ends’
A Performance Lecture by Carol Moore, with readings by Marie Jones & Brenda Winter
Followed by a Q&A
Chair: Dr Charlotte Headrick

Brian Friel Theatre (QFT) 27th October, 5-7pm

This event is part of the Lay Up Your Ends at 40 symposium
See full schedule: https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/ael/Research/ConferencesandSymposia/LayUpYourEndsat40/Lay_Up_Your_Ends_at_40_Schedule/

Booking: https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650234

'At home' with Typhoid Mary - a rehearsed reading of a new play by Brenda Winter-Palmer.

Brian Friel Theatre
27th October 2023
1pm

This event is part of the Lay Up Your Ends at 40 symposium
See full schedule: https://www.qub.ac.uk/.../Lay_Up_Your_Ends_at_40_Schedule/

Booking: https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650234

Dr Brenda Winter in conversation with Dr Ali FitzGibbon

25th October 5-7pm
Brian Friel Theatre,
20 University Square
Queen University Belfast,

What mobilises women’s theatre? What drives it to pursue inclusive practices with marginalised groups such as disabled people and young artists? And what is the impact of such work on theatre cultures and, potentially, on society as a whole? Please join Dr Brenda Winter, founder member of Charabanc Theatre Company, and Dr Ali FitzGibbon, Senior Lecturer in Creative & Cultural Industries Management at QUB, as they reflect on these questions and on the work that Brenda has done since Charabanc. Each member of Charabanc has gone on to contribute in significant ways to theatre-making on the island of Ireland and Brenda is no exception. She has worked as a writer, director, actor and teacher. She founded Belfast’s longest established TYA company, Replay Theatre Company, and was a pioneer in developing disability arts work in NI. This is a conversation that will consider the legacies of Charabanc and how its formation relates to Brenda’s later work, even as it considers more broadly the nature of the history of women’s theatre-making in the north of Ireland.

Booking: https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650231

Witches in Eden by Olga Fielden (Riverside Theatre, Coleraine)

Friday & Saturday
27th-28th October

Olga Fielden wrote Witches in Eden for the anthology Four New One-Act Plays, edited by Patricia O’Connor (Quota Press, 1948). This little-known play premiered in 1951 at the Larne Drama Festival, and was produced again in Larne in 1975. It was the first Irish play to be based on a real witch trial, taking the trials of 1711 as its material.
This multidisciplinary production, using script, animation, music and VFX, will allow audiences to experience the history of the trial while imagining the lives of the accused. The gender politics of Fielden’s play, its approach to historical accuracy, and the positioning of the witches as victims prefigure Arthur Millar’s The Crucible (1953). This is a story of murder, magic, the devil, and a community in crisis. It offers a unique glimpse into how the ‘witch hunts’ that claimed over 40,000 lives in Europe played out in Northern Ireland.
Riverside Theatre Coleraine
For information & booking, please contact Lisa Fitzpatrick at [email protected]
And see: https://www.visitcausewaycoastandglens.com/whats-on/witches-in-eden-p860951

CELEBRATING JO EGAN
26TH OCTOBER – 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Join us for an evening of performances and reflections as we pay tribute to playwright Jo Egan. Alongside contributions from Gerri Moriarty, Moyra Donaldson, and Fionnuala Kennedy, there will be an opportunity to view items from Jo’s archive, which is part of The Linen Hall’s Theatre and Performing Arts Archive.

Booking: https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650232

Workshop: Publishing and Performing ‘Lost’ Plays,
Thursday 26th October, The Linen Hall Library, 3-5.30pm
Dr Lisa Fitzpatrick & Dr Shonagh Hill

Lisa Fitzpatrick and Shonagh Hill published Plays by Women in Ireland 1926-1933: Feminist Theatres of Freedom and Resistance (Methuen, 2022), a collection of five plays by women writing in the first decade of the Irish Free State. This workshop shares the experience of researching, retrieving, and publishing unpublished or ‘lost’ playscripts from archival sources. It also explores the process of staging Olga Fielden’s 1948 play Witches in Eden, reflecting upon the dramaturgical choices made in reviving a play from 75 years ago.
The workshop will be discussion based, and is aimed at theatre professionals, academics, and students engaged with women’s writing, and with the recovery of ‘lost’, out of print, or never-published plays in the archives.

Booking:
https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873650229

Booking for our events is through the Belfast International Festival website,

Lay Up Your Ends At 40 - Belfast International Arts Festival A Celebration of Charabanc Theatre Company and Women’s Theatre in Northern Ireland This year marks 40 years since the premiere of Charabanc Theatre Company’s landmark production Lay Up Your Ends.

Delighted to be partnering with Ulster University and the Linen Hall Library to host a series of events to mark 40 years since the premiere of Marie Jones's, Charabanc Theatre Company's and Martin Lynch’s Lay Up Your Ends, and to recognise some of the enormous contributions that women have made to Northern Irish theatre. From the 25th to 28th of October we are hosting conversations and discussions with some of the members of Charabanc, panels and talks, workshops, and staged readings. Please join us!

This event is run in collaboration with The Linen Hall Library and the Belfast International Arts Festival, and is supported by the Faculty Research Initiatives Fund and the Drama Department in the School of Arts, English & Languages at QUB, and the School of Arts & Humanities at Ulster University.