’Powerful drama’ explores differing viewpoints on events of 1916
The Jethro Centre, Lurgan, recently hosted Halfway House, a drama about 1916 written and produced by Philip Orr and featuring (L–R) Antoinette Morelli and Louise Parker.
The play, which explores the events of 1916 and their legacy, is one of 2 written by Philip for a Contemporary Christianity Project entitled 1916: A Hundred Years On. The project is a creative response to the current decade of political centenaries that have shaped our country for better or for worse.
Bishop Harold attended and described it as a “powerful drama”. He said: “Philip Orr is an impressive playwright and in writing Halfway House he has allowed us to address the very important issue of how differently people from different backgrounds in Northern Ireland may view history.”
The play is set in 1966. Early in the year, two women meet by chance in a snow–bound pub in the Sperrin Mountains and discover that each has a personal connection to the wartime events of fifty years ago in Ireland and abroad. The nature of their connections unfolds, together with their personal perspectives on the past.
Following the performance there was a facilitated discussion with the audience. Here are some of the responses:
“The difference to nowadays is that 50 years ago Loyalists and Republicans, Catholics and Protestants couldn’t have had this discussion.”
“What’s needed is the courage to have the conversations and to keep having them when it gets difficult.”
“If they’d attended school together, they would have had these conversations earlier.”
“Decency was what stopped us going over the precipice into a full scale civil war during the troubles – even during the Easter Rising there was decency, there were two small ceasefires when there could have been a massacre.”
“There were a lot of similarities between the Proclamation and the Covenant, both call on people in the name of God and Scottish men had a hand in writing both of them.”
Download more information about the project here.