Arts Week with Judy Murphy

The 2025 Druid Debuts play-reading series will take place next weekend, with the company presenting Fuscardi’s by Conor Kelly, Boom Boom Bang by Treasa Nealon and Grace by Clare Monnelly.

These three scripts were selected from more than 200 submissions, made to Druid’s new writing programme earlier this year. The readings will take place in Druid’s Mick Lally Theatre next Friday and Saturday, December, 5 and 6, as part of the company’s 50th anniversary programme.

Fuscardi’s is a memory play set in a chip shop by the sea. It moves between events in the summer of 1982 which irrevocably change one family, and a week in 2022 when the family matriarch is about to die. It’s billed as “a play about love, estrangement, echoes and chips” and comes from Conor Kelly, a Dublin-based playwright and director, and a graduate of the MFA in Playwriting programme at The Lir Academy. He’s the founder of Saltwater Theatre which, in August, delivered the premiere production of his play, Just Being Open With You.

Treasa Nealon’s Boom Boom Bang is a drama about three chronically bored twenty-somethings surviving in a dead-end rural Leitrim town. On one fateful night, their careless actions lead to a young child being grievously injured.

A playwright and theatre-maker based in Leitrim, Treasa was a successful participant in the Irish Theatre Institute’s Virtual Six in the Attic programme. Her recent writing for stage includes Homesick at Dublin Fringe Festival in September and the short play Growing, Grown, Gone at Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival in June.

Clare Monnelly’s Druid Debuts play, Grace, explores challenging themes of motherhood, attempted murder and psychiatric healthcare.

Writer and actor Clare is no stranger to Druid. Her debut play, Charlie’s a Clepto, produced by the Axis, Ballymun in 2017, which received two Irish Times Theatre Award nominations, was staged there in 2019. Clare’s other plays have been produced by Livin’ Dred Theatre Company, Asylum Productions and Once Off Productions. They’ve premiered at Dublin Fringe Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival and Cairde Arts Festival, and have toured nationally, including to Druid. She recently received the Discovery Award from Dublin International Film Festival for her Screen Ireland-funded short film, Cat & Mouse, and she’s currently in development on her debut feature film.

The Druid Debuts series offers audiences a unique opportunity to experience new plays fresh off the page and to share an open discussion with the writers, directors and cast following the performances.

Pictured: Clare Monnelly’s play Grace will receive a rehearsed reading on Saturday evening, December 6.