Shame Show

Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming. For your safety, please follow this pair of prancing poofs to SHAME SHOW, a sketchy comedy of catastrophic proportions from Skelpie Limmer, the creators of Scaredy Fat and Two Fingers Up.

Adam and Stevie are stuck inside. Storm Seamus is about to strike. The rural fixer-upper they’ve inherited can’t hack it – and neither can their relationship. But through the static of Aunt Mary’s old TV comes an offer of salvation asking:

Have you been mis-sold big gay shame?

Wouldn’t it all be better in a different, sunnier, more progressive place?

Will Northern Ireland ever progress if all the progressives leave?

Is there really no place like home?

Channel-hopping their way through programmes of poofy-past, the couple confront home, happiness and heteronormativity as they battle the storm and each other’s beliefs.

A worthy First Fortnight Award winner at Dublin Fringe 2024, Colm McCready & Fergus Wachala-Kelly’s hugely entertaining and poignant SHAME SHOW disempowers the negativity that shaped us and the fear we’ve been force-fed, shaking off the shackles of shame for the climb ahead.

Developed at MAKE, HATCH at The MAC Belfast, and Incubate at Tinderbox Theatre Company.

Age suitability:16+
Duration:60 mins

Fortuna and Chips

Join us for a rehearsed reading with music of a vibrant new play by acclaimed playwright, Brenda Winter Palmer.

Cast
Santa Lucia Forza: Libby Smyth
Fortuna: Maggie Cronin
Musician: Rod McVey

It is 1937. In Italy, Mussolini is at the zenith of his Fascist powers. In Belfast, the celebrated chippy, Lucy’s, is gearing up for the usual Friday night rush. Its owner, Santa Lucia Forza, is not happy. It is fifty years since she escaped hunger to find a better life in Belfast. But, now that Il Duce has made Italy great again, she longs to go home. Her husband, street musician Antonio, has other ideas.

Santa Lucia’s widowed daughter Fortuna is refusing to help in the shop. Nor will she find other employment. Fortuna’s son Pietro, to his Nonna’s dismay, is more  interested in hurling than in learning Italian. All Santa Lucia’s woes come to a head when she tries to set her daughter up as a fortune teller. In 1937. it is probably best not to see too far ahead.

This play pays tribute to the Italian economic migrants who flocked to Ireland from the 1880s onwards. They have contributed richly to cultural and economic life here as vendors of fish suppers,  ‘99s’, pokes and sliders as well as bringing us their skills as musicians and exquisite terrazzo tilers. They were ill-rewarded when Mussolini entered Hitler’s War in 1940 and Italian residents became enemy aliens overnight.

Brenda Winter Palmer is the author of the First World War drama, Medal in the Drawerand the highly successful ‘show band wives’ story, Keep Telling Me Lies. Her most recent play, RSVP: Typhoid Mary, is slated with Brassneck Theatre Company for production in 2026.

Running time: 70 minutes. There will be an opportunity for discussion and questions after the performance.

Age: 14+

Photo: La Famiglia Marcantonio (Marken). With thanks to the Marken family for permission to use the photograph. Thanks too to the members of Victor’s Cafe Facebook page for all their help.

Lisdoon Nirvana

Presented by The Mac and CQAF

 

For anyone who’s ever been young and dreamed of going to a festival and finding Nirvana…

Lisdoon Nirvana is a dramatic monologue with live music, written and performed by Frankie McCafferty and directed by Charlie Bonner.

Based on the last music festival at Lisdoonvarna in July 1983, the piece follows one young guy, Macker, and his friends making the Odyssean trip from Donegal to Clare. Travelling on the pillion of his friend’s two-stroke motorbike, they encounter 80s Ireland and young people from all over making the same pilgrimage.

Laden with camping gear and cheap alcohol smuggled across the border, wearing a converted Garda riot control helmet stuffed with bin bags, and a pair of swimming goggles, our hero undergoes a rite of passage as he ventures out into the big bad beautiful world.

Through his eyes we see the Folk and Rock glory of the Irish Glastonbury – and a country in transition, with a backdrop of recession, church oppression, emigration and Troubles. But right now Macker’s 17. There’s Smithwick’s in the rucksack. And rumour has it that the girls from the North are bringing hash and condoms. So that’s alright Mama…

Written and performed by Frankie McCafferty. Directed by Charlie Bonner

Produced by An Grianán Theatre Productions

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The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and Out To Lunch are annual festivals of music, comedy, theatre, art and literature which take place in January and May in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival / Out To Lunch Arts Festival
Unit 8
Northern Whig House
Bridge Street
Belfast
BT1 1LU