When I first stepped into the Glass Mask Theatre in Dublin\u2014tucked just behind a quiet caf\u00e9\u2014I didn\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the first of three shows I saw in Ireland, each of them revealing something more about Irish theatre\u2014and maybe something about myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What struck me most wasn’t the polished production or ornate set (there wasn\u2019t much of either), but the raw human experience being offered. Jigsaw tells the story of a man grappling with addiction, grief, and estrangement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Except\u2014plot twist\u2014he hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What could have been confusing was instead electric. You always knew who each character was\u2014not because of costumes or grand gestures, but because the performers were so grounded in truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It didn\u2019t feel like acting. It felt like storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That became my first lesson in Irish theatre: it\u2019s not about constructing fantasy, but about inviting the audience into a shared reality. It\u2019s empathetic. Personal. Unapologetically human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Gnome, a Vodka Bottle, and a Broken Heart<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A few nights later, I saw Myra\u2014a one-woman show about a woman named Myra, homeless and hardened, wandering through memories of love, loss, and loneliness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014not as weakness, but as a symptom of deeper wounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The show doesn\u2019t ask for pity. It demands recognition: that when people are swallowed by their vices, it’s often because they\u2019ve been hollowed out by pain the world refuses to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Addiction becomes less a choice, and more a survival mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet\u2014Myra was hilarious. Yes, the dialect was thick (I lost a few jokes to the accent), but when it landed, it landed hard. There\u2019s a talking gnome. A Russian vodka bottle with personality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These absurd, laugh-out-loud moments made the heartbreak hit even harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I couldn\u2019t help but think of the quote, \u201cThat\u2019s the Irish People all over\u2013they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.\u201d \u2014 Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey, Shadow of a Gunman<\/em>\u2014Myra embodied that sentiment fully. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014and maybe even forgive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Specky Clark: Myth, Movement, and Memory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An abstract dance-theatre piece conceived by Oona Doherty, it\u2019s a fusion of biography, folklore, and fever dream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The show follows the journey of Oona\u2019s great-great-grandfather as he arrives in Belfast, but it unfolds more like a haunting than a history lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dancers emerge from darkness. Walls collapse. Halloween masks appear. Voices from the past echo\u2014\u201cLet me tell you a story\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t shake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014regardless of size or style, Irish theatre is always rooted in storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It reminded me why I\u2019m in this field. Not for applause or spectacle, but for the chance to tell stories that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Final Reflections: What Irish Theatre Taught Me<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Irish theatre doesn\u2019t ask its audience to escape\u2014it asks us to look closer. It gives pain a voice, lets humor live beside heartbreak, and offers a mirror to society without flinching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From caf\u00e9 theatres to national stages, the work I saw here reminded me that good theatre doesn\u2019t need to be flashy. It just needs to be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now, when I return to my own work, I\u2019ll carry these voices with me: the man on the park bench, the woman with the gnome, the boy sent away on Halloween. They\u2019re not just characters. They\u2019re reminders. And they\u2019ve given me something I didn\u2019t expect\u2014a renewed purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Is Samhain? The Ancient Holiday Behind Specky Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When Specky Clark opened on a haunting Halloween night in Belfast, the atmosphere pulsed with more than just theatrical tension \u2014 it was rooted in an ancient Celtic tradition: Samhain (pronounced SOW-in). <\/p>\n\n\n\n This festival, older than Christianity and far more layered than modern Halloween, is one of Ireland\u2019s most spiritually significant cultural legacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Origins and Meaning<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u2014 when the boundary between the physical world and the spirit world thinned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The dead could cross over, and the living were more exposed to supernatural forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Samhain\u2019s Influence on Halloween<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When Christianity spread through Ireland, many pagan festivals were rebranded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Samhain evolved into All Hallows\u2019 Eve \u2014 the night before All Saints\u2019 Day \u2014 eventually transforming into the Halloween we know today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But while Halloween became commercialized with candy and costumes, Samhain retained its spiritual core in Irish folklore and rural tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Samhain in Specky ClarkIn Specky Clark, Samhain is more than a date \u2014 it’s a metaphor. The play lifts \u201cthe veil\u201d between worlds, just as the Celts believed happened on this night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oona Doherty\u2019s choreography breathes life into ancestral memory, with dancers moving like echoes of the past. The Halloween setting isn\u2019t about spooky fun \u2014 it\u2019s about reckoning with the spirits that shaped us, the traumas we inherit, and the survival we learn in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By, Ayden Freed When I first stepped into the Glass Mask Theatre in Dublin\u2014tucked just behind a quiet caf\u00e9\u2014I didn\u2019t expect to leave with my heart split wide open. 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