Irish Rep Announces the Cast & Creative Team for BELFAST GIRLS

Irish Repertory Theatre announced today the cast and creative team for the New York Premiere of Belfast Girls by Jaki McCarrick (The Naturalists). Directed by Nicola Murphy (A Girl is a Half-formed Thing), Belfast Girls will run May 11-June 26, 2022, on the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage, with an opening night set for May 19, 2022.

The cast of Belfast Girls will include Aida Leventaki (Power Book III: Raising Kanan) as Molly Durcan, Labhaoise Magee (Pumpgirl) as Ellen Clarke, Mary Mallen (Manchester by the Sea) as Hannah Gibney, Caroline Strange (London Assurance) as Judith Noone and Sarah Street (Afterwards) as Sarah Jane Wylie.

Belfast Girls will feature set design by Chika Shimizu (The Great Wave), costume design by China Lee (Autumn Royal), lighting design by Michael O'Connor (A Girl is a Half-formed Thing) and sound design by Caroline Eng (The October Storm). Avery Trunko (This Space Between Us) will serve as Production Stage Manager, with Mary Garrigan (Marie Antoinette) as Assistant Stage Manager.

"Who knows what dreams were born on the Inchinnan, huh? If it's not us who will have those freedoms you talked of...then maybe our daughters will. That's the important thing."

1850, on board a ship bound from Belfast to Sydney. Five young women seek to become "mistresses of their own destiny." But some find they cannot escape the nightmare of the lives they are leaving behind. As they draw nearer to the promised land, their connection to the past grows ever more powerful, eliciting rage, love, despair, and above all, hope.

In the late 1840s, men largely outnumbered women in Australia, and there were not enough people entering the labor force. At the same time, the Great Famine in Ireland had left many young women destitute, with thousands in workhouses. Amid these social crises, Earl Grey, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, arranged to kill two birds with one stone by sending "morally pure" girls aged 14-18 to Australia through the Female Orphan Emigration Scheme. All told, between 1848 and 1850, 4,114 girls voluntarily boarded 20 ships to make the four-month journey and start new lives in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. Belfast Girls imagines the stories of five young women who made the journey.

Jaki McCarrick won the 2010 Papatango Prize for New Writing for her play Leopoldville. Belfast Girls was developed at The National Theatre Studio in London in 2012 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the 2014 BBC Tony Doyle Award. Productions have been mounted in Chicago, Portland and Pittsburgh.

The performance schedule is as follows: Wednesdays at 3pm & 8pm; Thursdays at 7pm; Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 3pm & 8pm; Sundays at 3pm. Exceptions: there will be no performance on Wednesday May 18 at 3pm. There will be an added performance on Tuesday May 17 at 7pm.

Tickets to Belfast Girls begin at $45 and are available now at IrishRep.org.

Currently in performances on the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage is Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, directed by Ciarán O'Reilly and playing a limited run through April 17. Two by Synge by John Millington Synge and directed by Charlotte Moore will begin previews in the W. Scott McLucas Studio Stage on April 13 with an opening night set for April 24 and a limited run through May 22.

For the most up to date information about Irish Rep's COVID safety policy please visit irishrep.org/explore/reopening-roadmap.