In association with the Kennedy Center & the Irish Arts Center
Tiny Plays for Ireland & America
Tiny Plays for Ireland and America written by 20 playwrights from Ireland & 6 playwrights from America. It was part of Ireland 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts & Culture.
Reviews
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‘director Jim Culleton shifts gears and changes tack admirably’
The Irish Times -
‘astutely juxtaposed…ingeniously written…a showcase of brilliantly versatile acting talent…fascinating’
The Guardian -
‘Brilliantly crafted…small really can be beautiful ’
Sunday Business Post -
‘Extraordinary … it’s what theatre should be about’
Sunday Independent
Cast
Sorcha Fox
Sorcha is a poet, writer, actor and facilitator. She has written 2 performance poetry shows, Who am Ireland? and Remember. She wrote her first Spoken Word play; For Rachel – 2 Squirrels, as part of the Home Theatre Ireland project in Draíocht, Dublin 2018 for the Dublin Theatre Festival. She has been working since on a longterm project with women in addiction recovery with Ashleigh House and Draíocht Blanchardstown called Amplify thanks to Create Ireland.
In 2019, with the Hawkswell Theatre Sligo, she took part in a creative residency with Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah culminating in a performance on Culture Night 2019 of a new piece called Medusa with live original music from Dee Armstrong and Lughaidh Armstrong Mayock. Medusa is now being developed further with the support of Hawkswell Sligo. Sorcha is a member of the team that organizes PalFest Ireland, an Irish arts festival in support of Palestine. In 2017, she travelled to Jenin Refugee Camp in Northern Palestine where she completed a course in Theatre and Cultural Resistance with The Freedom Theatre.
She is currently working as a writing facilitator on Amir Abualrob’s project Taa Marbuta supported by Create Ireland. Sorcha is very happy to be working with Fishamble again on the brilliant Tiny Plays series.
Productions
Emmet Kirwan
Emmet Kirwan is an award-winning actor and playwright from
Tallaght in Dublin. He studied drama and theatre studies at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin.
Over the last twenty years Emmet has worked and collaborated as both actor and writer with both THISISPOPBABY and Fishamble: The New Play company. THISISPOPBABY has commissioned Emmet to write this new work What If We Get To Be Happy, and previously the poetry sections of both of their smash hit shows RIOT and WAKE and he has collaborated many times with Phillip McMahon on both of their work, including Straight to Video, Alice in Funderland, and Dublin Oldschool which was developed as part of the Fishamble/Dublin Fringe/ITI Show in a Bag initiative. He first worked with Fishamble on Gary Duggan’s Monged over twenty years ago this year, and has worked on Tiny Plays for Ireland and America in New York and Washington DC, and The Leap, as an actor with the company since. This is his first time collaborating with the company as a playwright.
In this anniversary year also, Emmet has had a long and incredible artistic partnership with Project Arts Centre. They have supported him throughout his career both as an actor and playwright and have staged or co-produced all of his plays. It is an incredible honour to bring this new work home to the Project Arts in it’s 60th year.
Emmet has worked in Irish and English Theatre performing many times on stages such as Project Arts Centre, The Abbey Theatre, The Gate, Donmar Warehouse, The National Theatre of Britain, and The Soho, as well as working with leading theatre companies such as Rough Magic, Fishamble, THISISPOPBABY, Guna Nua, Story Tellers, Semper Fi Barabbas, Island, Performance Corporation amongst many others.
He has numerous film and television credits most recently the films Magpie and Spilt Milk, and KIN season 3.
His most recent work as a writer and performer is Accents. A spoken word verse play in a musical collaboration with Eoin French (who performs as Talos) and directed by Claire O’Reilly of Malaprop theatre company. It was produced by Cian O’Brien and Caoimhe Whelan for COBA Productions. This played two sell out runs in Project Arts Centre and embarked on a sell out
nationwide tour in 2025. It was the first play to debut at the recently reopened Ambassador Theatre. His multi-character video shop set, hit comedy play Straight to Video, was produced by Landmark Productions and Project Arts Centre.
As a playwright performer Emmet’s play Dublin Oldschool directed by Phillip McMahon won the Stewart Parker award for playwriting, it was produced by Project Arts Centre and did seven
sell out runs there before touring internationally and transferring to The Dorfman in The National Theatre for a sell out run. It was adapted into a feature film with Element Pictures and opened in
Irish and British cinemas in 2018 and international festivals including the London BFI. It returned to The Olympia Theatre in 2024.
Emmet also wrote the poetry sections and performed in THISISPOPBABY’S RIOT, which has played Vicar Street in Dublin and toured internationally to The Sydney theatre festival and Skirball New York. His poem Heartbreak is taken from this show and was adapted in to a short film that won an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Short Film.
Other writing includes the radio drama Wild West (2018) for BBC 4, (nominated for Best Radio Drama Award 2019 from The Writers Guild of Ireland) and Queen of The Pyramids (2019) for
Landmark Productions. He was also funded by the Arts Council to develop his play The
Last Partholonian a play based on the first cycle of Irish Mythology. It received a performed reading directed by Oonagh Murphy.
He is also known for writing and starring in the RTÉ 2 comedy series Sarah and Steve for Accomplice television.
Productions
Mary Murray
Mary’s stage performances have toured Europe, China and the United States. She received Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards with MAMCA, The First Irish Theatre Festival in New York and The Irish Times.
She has over 60 screen credits. She was nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the Irish Film and Television Awards for her role as Janet in Love Hate. Other notable productions include Valhalla, Penny Dreadful, Adam and Paul, The Magdalene Sisters, Dead Still and Let the Wrong One In.
She voiced numerous animations and radio plays and she’s the recipient of the Best Actress Award at the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2023 for her performance in the Pride of Parnell Street, produced by Fishamble Theatre Company.
Mary is the director of Visions Drama School.
Productions
Creative Team
Jim Culleton
Jim Culleton is the Artistic Director of Fishamble: The New Play Company, for which he has directed productions on tour throughout Ireland, UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. His productions for Fishamble have won Olivier, The Stage, Scotsman Fringe First, and Irish Times Best Director awards.
Jim has also directed for the Abbey, the Gaiety, the Belgrade, 7:84 Scotland, Project, Amharclann de hÍde, Tinderbox, Passion Machine, the Ark, Second Age, Dundee Rep, CoisCéim/Crash Ensemble/GIAF, Frontline Defenders, Amnesty International, Little Museum of Dublin, Fighting Words, Soho Theatre, Scripts Festival, and Baptiste Programme. He has directed audio plays for Audible, BBC, RTÉ Radio 1, and RTÉ lyric fm. He has directed for Vessel and APA (Australia), TNL (Canada), Solas Nua, Mosaic, and Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Odyssey (LA), Origin, Irish Arts Center, New Dramatists, and 59E59 (Off-Broadway), as well as for Trafalgar Theatre Productions on the West End, and IAC/Symphony Space on Broadway. Jim has taught for NYU, NUI, GSA, Uversity, the Lir, Villanova, Notre Dame, UM, UMD, JNU, and TCD.
Productions
Eva Scanlan
Eva Scanlan is the Executive Director at Fishamble: The New Play Company.
Formerly producer at Fishamble, recent productions include Fight Night by Gavin Kostick (2025), Taigh/Tŷ/Teach, a trilingual co-production with partners in Scotland and Wales (2024), In Two Minds by Joanne Ryan (2023), Heaven by Eugene O’Brien (2022), Outrage by Deirdre Kinahan (2022), Duck Duck Goose by Caitríona Daly (2021), The Treaty by Colin Murphy (2021), Embargo by Deirdre Kinahan (2020), The Alternative by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney (2019), Rathmines Road by Deirdre Kinahan (2018), On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Barry (2017-2021), Inside The GPO by Colin Murphy (2016) and Fishamble’s award-winning plays by Pat Kinevane King, Before, Silent, Underneath and Forgotten, and many other productions on tour in Ireland and around the world.
Eva produced The 24 Hour Plays: Dublin at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland (2012-2026), in association with The 24 Hour Plays, New York as a fundraiser for Dublin Youth Theatre. She has worked on The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway and The 24 Hour Musicals at the Gramercy Theatre in New York. Previously, she was Producer at terraNOVA Collective in New York (2012-2015) and has worked on theatre productions, events and conferences at the Bushwick Starr, 59E59 Theaters, New Ohio Theatre, the New School, the Park Avenue Armory, and Madison Square Garden.
Productions
Production Video
Featuring 20 Irish Tiny Plays
Soul Mates by Maeve Binchy
Thorny Island by Sarah Binchy
Commiserations by Niamh Creely
Unrequited by Michael Cussen
Tuesday Evening (Following the News) by Darren Donohue
The Straight Talk by Keith Farnan
Don’t Take It Personally by Rachel Feehily
Life in Two Syllables by Mike Finn
The Phone Records by Kevin Gildea
Naked Photographs of My Mother by Brendan Griffin
Broken by Deirdre Kinahan
Slanesman by Colum McCann
The Caring, Ireland by Pauline McLynn
The Night Feed by Justine Mitchell
Hearts by Lucy Montague-Moffatt
Guaranteed Irish by Colin Murphy
Sure This Is It by Ciara Ní Chuirc
Safety Announcement by Joseph O’Connor
Ode to Life by Richie O’Sullivan
I Stand Here Before You by Tom Swift
& 6 American Tiny Plays
Getting to the Polls by Daniel Covino (11-13)
Questions by Paige A. Colvin (14-17)
No More Excuses by Yael C. McCue (18-26)
A Nation of Immigrants by Keya Guimarães (27-59)
No Irish Need Apply by Monica E. Bauer (60+)
Malaika by Scott C. Bushnell (Kennedy Center)