In life, as on the stage, it’s not who I am but what I do that’s the measure of my worth.
Stella Adler, Actor, Director, Educator
Leaving the Ladies by Sinéad Mc Coole, Rehearsed Reading
Date and Time: Thursday 26 September, 1-2.30pm
Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2
Directed by Mary Moynihan
Followed by a Post-Show Panel Discussion with artists and invited guest speakers
Moderator: Niamh Clowry, Smashing Times
Category: Theatre Reading and Post-Show Panel Discussion
Tickets: 5 euro
DETAILS OF EVENT
Smashing Times present a rehearsed reading of Leaving the Ladies by Sinéad Mc Coole, directed by Mary Moynihan. This play is based on an actual event that took place just over one hundred years ago, on 11 December 1917 – a meeting between a group of women in the bathroom, beside the Round Room in the Mansion House, which was a place where many of the key political gatherings happened at this time. This was no chance meeting of a group of women in the ladies lavatory. It was a minuted meeting of the Women Delegates to the All Ireland Conference. It is recorded in a minute book which is now in the National Library of Ireland [MS 21,197]. This meeting was attended by some of the most important and influential women of the day. The women members of organisations such as Cumann na mBan, the Irish Women Worker’s Union and Women of the Irish Citizen Army – some had fought in the Rising the previous year. The play is a dramatized version of real events as told against the backdrop of the final stage of agitation for ‘Votes for Women’ campaign in the hope of attaining full suffrage, as the Representation of People Bill was to be passed into law.
The performance is followed by a post-show panel discussion. Speakers are:
The Artist Speaks: In Conversation with Sinéad McCoole
Speaker: Sinéad McCoole, Irish historian, author, broadcaster, script writer, historical and picture researcher and exhibition curator
Writer Sinéad McCoole speaks about her artistic processes and what inspired her to create Leaving the Ladies, offering a unique insight into the artistic investigation and creative journey taken. Sinéad will speak about the lives of the women featured in the performance and the relevance of such stories of pioneering women to today’s political climate, celebrating the lives of women in Irish history from 1916 to 1923 and women’s voices today.
The Artist Speaks: In Conversation with Mary Moynihan
Speaker: Mary Moynihan, Writer, Theatre, Film-Maker, Artistic Director, Smashing Times
Artist Mary Moynihan is author of a play, Constance and Her Friends, and an original art film Courageous Women, on the lives of women in Irish history from 1916 to 1923. Mary speaks about her artistic processes and what inspired her to create Constance and Her Friends and Courageous Women, offering a unique insight into the artistic investigation and creative journey taken.
