By, Ayden Freed
When I first stepped into the Glass Mask Theatre in Dublin—tucked just behind a quiet café—I didn’t expect to leave with my heart split wide open. That night, I watched Jigsaw, a two-man play that felt like peeling back the layers of a wound: painful, honest, and ultimately healing.
It was the first of three shows I saw in Ireland, each of them revealing something more about Irish theatre—and maybe something about myself.
What struck me most wasn’t the polished production or ornate set (there wasn’t much of either), but the raw human experience being offered. Jigsaw tells the story of a man grappling with addiction, grief, and estrangement.
He’s been sober for ten years, but when his mother falls ill and disowns him, and his ex-wife frames him for using again, everything unravels.
Except—plot twist—he hadn’t used. In fact, he was pouring the cocaine down the drain. It was his dealer who kept pushing, and his ex-wife who wanted him gone.
Despite the pain, Jigsaw was also strangely beautiful. It moved fluidly between past and present, memory and moment, with two actors shifting roles to portray the many people in the protagonist’s life.
What could have been confusing was instead electric. You always knew who each character was—not because of costumes or grand gestures, but because the performers were so grounded in truth.
It didn’t feel like acting. It felt like storytelling.
That became my first lesson in Irish theatre: it’s not about constructing fantasy, but about inviting the audience into a shared reality. It’s empathetic. Personal. Unapologetically human.
A Gnome, a Vodka Bottle, and a Broken Heart
A few nights later, I saw Myra—a one-woman show about a woman named Myra, homeless and hardened, wandering through memories of love, loss, and loneliness.
She shares her journey through marriage, divorce, strained friendships, the death of a child, and her growing dependence on alcohol. But what makes Myra so affecting is how it frames addiction—not as weakness, but as a symptom of deeper wounds.
The show doesn’t ask for pity. It demands recognition: that when people are swallowed by their vices, it’s often because they’ve been hollowed out by pain the world refuses to see.
Addiction becomes less a choice, and more a survival mechanism.
And yet—Myra was hilarious. Yes, the dialect was thick (I lost a few jokes to the accent), but when it landed, it landed hard. There’s a talking gnome. A Russian vodka bottle with personality.
These absurd, laugh-out-loud moments made the heartbreak hit even harder.
I couldn’t help but think of the quote, “That’s the Irish People all over–they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.” — Seán O’Casey, Shadow of a Gunman—Myra embodied that sentiment fully.
Just like Jigsaw, Myra explores the beast of addiction, the voices it whispers, the lives it breaks. But Myra also turns those voices into something we can recognize—and maybe even forgive.
Specky Clark: Myth, Movement, and Memory
And then came Specky Clark, staged at the Abbey Theatre. If Jigsaw and Myra were intimate stories told in quiet spaces, Specky Clark was a thunderclap.
An abstract dance-theatre piece conceived by Oona Doherty, it’s a fusion of biography, folklore, and fever dream.
The show follows the journey of Oona’s great-great-grandfather as he arrives in Belfast, but it unfolds more like a haunting than a history lesson.
Only one character speaks live dialogue. Everything else is music, movement, and a kind of spiritual choreography that pulls you in, not through logic, but through instinct.
Dancers emerge from darkness. Walls collapse. Halloween masks appear. Voices from the past echo—“Let me tell you a story…”
That line repeats, and with it, the show becomes less about a man named Specky Clark and more about Ireland itself. About its bloodlines. Its ghosts. Its scars. It was bold, jarring, and filled with images I still can’t shake.
What I loved most was that even with a bigger budget and a cast of international dancers, Specky Clark never lost sight of its purpose: to tell a story. That thread runs through all the theatre I saw here—regardless of size or style, Irish theatre is always rooted in storytelling.
It reminded me why I’m in this field. Not for applause or spectacle, but for the chance to tell stories that matter.
Final Reflections: What Irish Theatre Taught Me
Before this trip, I had only vague ideas of what Irish theatre was. Maybe something poetic. Maybe a little old-school. But what I discovered was something radically present, politically urgent, and emotionally resonant.
Irish theatre doesn’t ask its audience to escape—it asks us to look closer. It gives pain a voice, lets humor live beside heartbreak, and offers a mirror to society without flinching.
From café theatres to national stages, the work I saw here reminded me that good theatre doesn’t need to be flashy. It just needs to be honest.
And now, when I return to my own work, I’ll carry these voices with me: the man on the park bench, the woman with the gnome, the boy sent away on Halloween. They’re not just characters. They’re reminders. And they’ve given me something I didn’t expect—a renewed purpose.
What Is Samhain? The Ancient Holiday Behind Specky Clark
When Specky Clark opened on a haunting Halloween night in Belfast, the atmosphere pulsed with more than just theatrical tension — it was rooted in an ancient Celtic tradition: Samhain (pronounced SOW-in).
This festival, older than Christianity and far more layered than modern Halloween, is one of Ireland’s most spiritually significant cultural legacies.
Origins and Meaning
Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Celebrated from sunset on October 31st to sunset on November 1st, it was considered a liminal time — when the boundary between the physical world and the spirit world thinned.
The dead could cross over, and the living were more exposed to supernatural forces.
The Celts believed that during Samhain, spirits of the deceased returned to their homes, while malevolent fae and ghosts roamed the earth. To protect themselves, people lit bonfires, wore costumes, and offered food to appease wandering spirits. Sound familiar?
Samhain’s Influence on Halloween
When Christianity spread through Ireland, many pagan festivals were rebranded.
Samhain evolved into All Hallows’ Eve — the night before All Saints’ Day — eventually transforming into the Halloween we know today.
But while Halloween became commercialized with candy and costumes, Samhain retained its spiritual core in Irish folklore and rural tradition.
Samhain in Specky ClarkIn Specky Clark, Samhain is more than a date — it’s a metaphor. The play lifts “the veil” between worlds, just as the Celts believed happened on this night.
Oona Doherty’s choreography breathes life into ancestral memory, with dancers moving like echoes of the past. The Halloween setting isn’t about spooky fun — it’s about reckoning with the spirits that shaped us, the traumas we inherit, and the survival we learn in the dark.