PORTLAND, ORE.: Corrib Theatre has announced its 2019-20 season, featuring three works.
“Our seventh season is one of remembrance, resistance, and restitution,” said founding artistic director Gemma Whelan in a statement. “With humor, song, play, and storytelling, we explore Ireland’s history of scapegoating its most vulnerable citizens by relegating the female population to second class status and employing medieval tactics to punish the innocent—all while using the mantle of the church and state to justify it all. We wrap the season up with feminist fairy tales. Through play and fantasy, sheer ingenuity, and (of course) love, women wrestle back their power and regain their autonomy. The particular becomes universal—the world is reimagined through a lens of equity.”
The season will open with Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed (Sept. 20-Oct. 13), about young unwed Irish mothers struggling in a Magdalene laundry, an asylum run by nuns. The cast will include Lucy Paschall, Sasha Neufeld, Jamie Rea, Dainichia Noreault, Wynee Hu, Lorraine Bahr, and Victoria Alvarez-Chacon. Whelan will direct.
Next up will be James X (Feb. 13-March 1, 2020), by Gerard Mannix Flynn, about a plaintiff preparing for court by reexamining his confidential state files about injustices perpetuated in Ireland over a 45-year history. Todd Van Voris will star, and Whelan will direct.
Following will be Kissing the Witch (April 3-26, 2020), by Emma Donoghue, a collection of stories by girls and women that put a new spin on fairy tales. The cast will feature Kayla Hanson, Jamie Rae, Diane Kondrat, and Heath Koerschgen. Lava Alapai will direct.
Corrib Theatre’s mission is to engage, inspire, entertain, and challenge audiences with theatrical productions filtered through the Irish experience, and with a focus on contemporary and lesser-known voices.
