Stuart Carolan
Encyclopedia
Stuart Carolan is an Irish playwright
.
He wrote for "Raw", and "Little White Lie", in 2008.
He was 2007 Abbey Theatre's Writer-in-Association.
In 2007, Defender of the Faith played Off Broadway, at the Irish Repertory Theatre
, and in 2009 in Glasgow
, Scotland.
He works in Dublin.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
.
He wrote for "Raw", and "Little White Lie", in 2008.
He was 2007 Abbey Theatre's Writer-in-Association.
In 2007, Defender of the Faith played Off Broadway, at the Irish Repertory Theatre
Irish Repertory Theatre
The Irish Repertory Theatre is an Off Broadway theatre, founded by Ciarán O’Reilly and Charlotte Moore, which opened its doors in September 1988, with Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars.The mission of the theatre was and remains:...
, and in 2009 in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, Scotland.
He works in Dublin.
Works
- Defender Of The Faith, Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2004 (Nick Hern Books, 2004, ISBN 9781854598165)
- Empress of India, Galaway: Town Hall Theatre, Ireland, 2006
Reviews
Comedian Stuart Carolan’s first play is a surprisingly dark and intense thriller set in 1980s Northern Ireland. Five years after the celebrated 1981 hunger strikes and in the midst of the paranoia surrounding the "supergrass" informers in the Republican movement, a Republican family in South Armagh faces a turning point. Dairy farmer and father of two, Joe (Gerard McSorley), is a local brigade commander for the IRA. He is eager to ensure ideological continuity in his household. His eldest son Thomas (Laurence Kinlan) is an active volunteer, though he still mourns the loss of his younger brother Seamus a year before.
Stuart Carolan's Defender of the Faith has all the earmarks of a first play by a playwright with a promising future. Carolan's characters breathe fire. His story, like his characters and their relationships, transcends the play's period (the 1980s when the "Troubles" were at their zenith in Northern Ireland). But the plot sputters to a somewhat clunky ending. Still, there's enough emotional steam and dramatic tension to support its being tagged as a thriller and to send the viewer out of the theater imbued with the satisfying sense of having discovered a worthy new voice.
Ten years after the first IRA ceasefire you'd think that a new play set at the height of the Troubles would lack resonance. Things have moved rapidly in the interim, politics has come to the fore and Northern Ireland is slowly emerging from its murky past. But while time marches on, its legacy lasts far longer. While the guns are now (largely) silent, it'd be foolish to ignore the past and the lessons it can offer for the future.