‘a site-specific unearthing of one of Friel’s neglected plays’
August 29 2025: Performance 1, 7.30pm (in one sitting with interval).
August 30 2025: Performance 2, 8.30am (Act 1) and 4.30pm (Act 2)
August 31 2025: Performance 3, 8.30am (Act 1) and 4.30pm (Act 2)
The Keep, Ebrington Square, Derry~Londonderry
At its premiere in 1975 at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Volunteers received a hostile
press, so hostile that Friel’s friend and creative peer Seamus Heaney elected to write
a passionate letter in its defence to be published in England by the Times Literary
Supplement within weeks of its premiere. This 50 th Anniversary presentation closes
FrielDays 2025 with the first professional presentation in the 21 st Century, it will seek
to unearth this neglected play bringing its latent qualities to the surface for audiences
of today to make up their own minds. Over the next five years, to the Friel centenary
of his birth in 2029, there will be four more excavations of this play, at this time and in
this place. We hope that Year 1 may reveal a glimpse into a wonderful forgotten Irish
play. Under the direction of Paula McFettridge and Kabosh Theatre and produced
by Gary Crossan of the Derry Playhouse, eight male actors will give a rare
performed-reading of the play outdoors in the Ebrington Keep that sits below earth to
Ebrington Square overlooking the River Foyle.
Director: Paula McFettridge, Kabosh Theatre; Event Producer: Gary Crossan.
Mise En Scène: DoranBrowne; Festival Producer: Jonathan Burgess
Scene Setting:. Volunteers is set in a Viking archeological dig on Wood Quay by the
Liffey, Dublin. The volunteers for the dig are IRA prisoners. The play’s chronological
scenography is Act 1 c.8am and Act 2 later afternoon. Arts Over Borders, in co-
production with the Derry Playhouse, invited Belfast-based Kabosh Theatre to
reinterrogate this play within the Keep Walls of the former Ebrington British Army
Barracks overlooking the River Foyle in Derry~Londonderry, a site not far from one
of the most exciting Viking discoveries in Ireland on the banks of the Foyle estuary,
the Broighter Gold. The Opening Night will feature the play in one sitting. The
weekend’s succeeding two performances will follow the chronology of the play , early
morning and late afternoon, and have Seamus Heaney’s North read by the Derry
community in between.
Cast: Patrick O’Kane (Keeney) + full cast to be announced in July.
A Co-production with The Playhouse, Derry.
Tickets: £25 and £19.75 (concession)
