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Gin in a Teacup

Gin in a Teacup was commissioned by Origin Theatre Company in New York City as part of their 1st Irish Festival, 2009. It had a month-long run at the off-Broadway 59E59 Theater, New York (3-20 September 2009). For the Festival, called ‘Spinning the Times’, five female, Irish playwrights were commissioned to respond to a recent news topic covered in the New York press. Gin in a Teacup combined press coverage on the abortive uprising in Iran (summer 2009), with a lifestyle piece on Manhattan bars which modelled themselves on speakeasies, and reports on care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The play was developed through close collaboration with director M. Burke Walker, dramaturg Rebecca Nesvet, and actor Asyan Celik. Walker is a noted American theatre director who has worked extensively in the New York and Chicago theatres. Nesvet is prominent both as an international theatre-maker and playwright in her own right, and as a theatre academic. This rigorous process of development was designed to ensure that the piece fitted the commission: to produce a piece of powerful drama that engaged with current affairs and asked searching questions of its New York audience. The play was staged alongside work written by Geraldine Aron, Lucy Caldwell, Rosemary Jenkinson and Belinda McKeon, all writers chosen to represent the range and quality of playwriting talent emerging from the Irish theatre. It received favourable reviews in a range of international publications, including The New York Times, The New York Post, The Village Voice and Irish Theatre Magazine.