Wild Notes (NHB Modern Plays)

By Deirdre Kinahan

A play exploring the impact of colonialism through a meeting between Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and abolitionist who visited Ireland in the 1840s, and a young Irishwoman hoping to emigrate to the country he's running from.
Deirdre Kinahan's short play Wild Notes was first staged by Solas Nua in Washington D.C. in 2018.
The play is also available in the collection Deirdre Kinahan: Shorts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Mar 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781788506908

Deirdre Kinahan

Deirdre Kinahan is an award-winning playwright and a member of Aosdána, Ireland's elected body of outstanding artists. Her plays include: An Old Song, Half Forgotten (Abbey Theatre, 2023); Outrage (Fishamble, 2022); The Visit (Draiocht, Dublin Theatre Festival 2021); The Saviour (Landmark Productions, 2021); In the Middle of the Fields (Solas Nua DC, 2021); Embargo (Fishamble 2020); Dear Ireland (Abbey Theatre, 2020); The Bloodied Field (Abbey Theatre 2020); Rathmines Road (Fishamble and Abbey Theatre, 2018); Crossings (Pentabus Theatre, 2018); The Unmanageable Sisters, an adaptation of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles Soeurs (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2018); Wild Sky (Dublin, 2016); Spinning (Fishamble, 2014); Halcyon Days (Solstice Arts Centre, Co. Meath, and Dublin Theatre Festival, 2012); and Moment (Solstice Arts Centre, Co. Meath, 2009; Bush Theatre, London, 2011).

Book preview

DEIRDRE KINAHAN:

SHORTS

Wild Notes

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

This book of plays is dedicated to the memory of my brilliant, brave and beautiful friend, Jo Egan.

‘She is a girl would not be afraid to walk the whole world with herself’ Lady Augusta Gregory

Contents

Introduction

Original Production

Characters

Wild Notes

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Deirdre Kinahan

I am delighted by the publication of these five short plays which feature intermittently in the swirl of my writing career from my very first effort, Bé Carna (1999), to my most recent commission, An Old Song, Half Forgotten (2023). They each carry their own story as to my life in theatre, as well as reaching out into the ether to find voice for some beautiful, broken characters disappeared by the world.

The first play, Bé Carna (women of the flesh), was written in 1999 when I was working as an actress in my own fledgling theatre company, Tall Tales. A good friend of my mother Pat, Sister Fiona Pryle, was setting up a support group for women working in prostitution in Dublin and asked me if I would teach the ladies basic literacy and computer skills as a means of subsidising my budding artistic life. I spent five years working with this brilliant organisation, Ruhama Women’s Project, now considered to be one of the most important advocacy groups in Ireland and Europe.

Back in the day, however, we hadn’t a bob, and I remember literally wallpapering a tiny room at the top of a shop in a tough part of Dublin, with two of the women, to create our first meeting place. The women accessing the project had spent most of their lives working in prostitution. They were older now and Ruhama was trying to help them retrain and secure a different means of making a living, if that was their desire. Prostitution in Dublin in the