Paines Plough come to Lisburn

On saturday night I went to Lisburn's Island Arts Centre to hear new writing by 5 local playwrights, Richard Dormer, Martin Lynch, Rosemary Jenkinson, Stacey Gregg and David Ireland. 

The pieces were all about 10 minutes long, and were on the theme "Come to where I'm from". Its part of a UK wide project created by the English touring new writing company Paines Plough. Their only visit to Northern Ireland was hosted by Ransom Theatre Productions.

What made this new writing event a bit different was the writers had to read the material themselves. And they were nervous. Even the professional actors among them, Richard Dormer and David Ireland (who later confessed to me that he was the most nervous he has ever been).

I was asked to contribute to a feedback form afterwards. I started out using words like "enjoyable" "thought provoking" and then, as I warmed to the theme, at the same time the space ran out on the piece of paper, I realised that there was something else much more critical to new Northern Irish writing that had impressed me. Here was contemporary writing, and when I say contemporary I mean written in the last 2 to 3 weeks, that didn't seek to fall back on the old stereotypical "Troubles" voice.

It was hard hitting. David Ireland talking about his mixed reaction, as a Protestant from East Belfast, to the recent scenes of jubilation in Guildhall Square the day the Saville Report was published. 

It was funny and poignant. Stacey Gregg, wearing an "I Heart Belfast" tee-shirt, chose to make "home" an ex lover who she keeps going back to again and again and who starts seeing someone else more trendy when she's away living in England.

It was dry and understated. Rosemary Jenkinson, for whom home is also East Belfast, wryly noted that she had travelled to broaden her horizons, a spell teaching in Poland and Russia, only to come back home and Polish and Russian people have moved into her street.

Disturbing and divided. Richard Dormer remembered a night when he was 14 years old. A Lisburn Protestant, he had stood beside a Catholic friend as a mob of nearly 50 young men came to beat up his friend for getting a Protestant girl pregnant.But, in something out of a movie, as the crowd loomed closer, the scene was paused by the pregnant girl appearing out of nowhere and standing between them and the crowd.

And Martin Lynch introduced us to a neighbour of his from the docks area of Belfast, Mrs Baker, whose straight talking thoughts on everyone from Ian Paisley to Gerry Adams to Barack Obama can't be written down here. 

Here's hoping the work gets a stage again.