HONOR MOLLOY
Playwright | Novelist | Salonnière
PLAYS
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Rasher Moorigan has a secret that only his mother knows. Tonight – for the first time in over 30 years – a mother and son spend May Eve together in a wreck of a house down the backlanes of Dublin. Melding reality and myth, Crackskull Row is the story of an Irish family’s desperate actions and forbidden loves.
Crackskull Row premiered off-Broadway at the Irish Repertory Theatre on February 3, 2017. Directed by Kira Simring, the production featured Gina Costigan, Terry Donnelly, Colin Lane and John Charles McLaughlin. Prior to its Irish Rep production, Crackskull Row produced by The Cell Theatre as part of Origin Theater’s 1st Irish Festival on September 5, 2016 with the same cast and creatives.
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Two emergency telephone operators handle a terrifying series of calls on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001.This piece is part of Snapshot, an anthology of short plays.
Monument appeared at the Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2002 Humana Festival of New American Plays. The production was directed by Russell Vadenbroucke and featured an ensemble of Jake Goodman and Ellie Clark. The creative team included Paul Owen (scenic design), John White (costume design), Tony Penna (lighting design), Colbert Davis (sound design), and Doc Manning (props).Monument has been performed at more than 100 professional, community, and educational theaters around the world.
A photograph captures and documents a single moment in time and space – a snapshot of history, of a reality bounded by the photo’s frame. But what lies outside, beyond, behind the photograph? And what stories, memories, or associations does an image of place inspire? In this multi-writer project from Actors Theatre of Louisville, a diverse assortment of talented playwrights encounter and transform Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969, a compelling image of the monument by renowned photographer Lee Friedlander. Their thought-provoking scenes and monologues range from delightful comedy to utterly serious tragedy, each approaching the photo's themes through a new lens.
MONOLOGUES
In this follow-up to their groundbreaking collection Take Ten, editors Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have put together a veritable bonfire of talent. Take Ten II: More 10-Minute Plays provides a fast-track tour of the current theatrical landscape, from the slapstick ingenuity of David Ives’ Arabian Nights to the searing tension of Diana Son’s 9/11 drama The Moon, Please, to Susan Miller’s luminous fable The Grand Design. This remarkably diverse anthology includes thirty-five short plays by such major American playwrights as Christopher Durang, Warren Leight, Romulus Linney and Donald Margulies, alongside a host of exciting new voices.
Actors, directors, producers and teachers will find Take Ten II an invaluable source of meaty roles for people of every age, ethnicity and gender; lovers of theatre will find it a richly satisfying read.
Since its inception a decade ago, the ground-breaking Monologues for Women by Women series has increased the breadth and the quality of original material available to actresses. In this fourth volume, editors Tori Haring-Smith and Liz Engelman present fifty-nine previously unpublished monologues written by some of the most inspiring and exciting women now emerging onto the international stage, as well as some names already familiar to followers of the theatre.
Women in theatre are constantly searching for new characters to play and new pieces to audition and perform. With New Monologues for Women by Women, they needn't look any further for the best in new, original material that speaks to all audiences in a woman's authentic voice.
Louisville's annual Humana Festival is famous as a showcase for new plays and playwrights. The 2002 festival included new works by such big guns as Anne Bogart, Tina Howe, Julia Jordan, Charles L. Mee, and Adam Rapp, while emerging playwrights were relegated to Humana's National One-Act Play Contest. The best plays here--Howe's witty, polished fantasy, Rembrandt's Gift, and Charles L. Mee's literate comedy about a young woman entangled with an older man, Limonade Tous Les Jours --may be the best new full-length plays produced in America last year. Like "The Phone Plays" of previous years, "Snapshot" consists of the contributions of playwrights well-known and not, this time in response to a Lee Friedlander photograph of tourists looking at Mount Rushmore. Of these, Honor Molloy's moving meditation on 9/11 is most haunting.
PROSE
An autobiographical novel set in 1960s Ireland, this irresistible story follows the rise and fall of the O’Feeney family, seen through the eyes of a precocious little girl. More savage than civilized, Noleen is a rare character from a Dublin long forgotten, where Nelson’s Pillar still stands in O’Connell Street?but not for long?and where untamed musicians gather in the O’Feeneys’ kitchen to raise a jar and the roof. Noleen’s father, a successful actor and scoundrel king of the city, does his best to destroy his family, while her mother tries to save it. Noleen schemes to make it through each Dublin day, cadging sweets and growing tough in the midst of chaos. In the end, however, nothing?not even a fierce girl’s powerful imagination?can hold the family together and keep them, safe as geese in the sky, in their home on Tolka Row.
In the ten years following the Great Famine, Irish flooded into New York at an astonishing rate. By 1860 one in every four New Yorkers was Irish, and by the 1920s Irish-American authors like Eugene O’Neill and F. Scott Fitzgerald had transformed the American literary landscape and laid the foundation for a century that would put Irish writing at the forefront of American letters.
This series of essays by and about Irish-American writers traces that heritage from it’s humble origins through the twentieth century. Editor Colin Broderick provides background essays on Brendan Behan’s New York, Maeve Brennan’s heartbreaking decent into madness, Frank McCourt’s rise from school teacher to literary phenomenon, and 23 of today’s top Irish-American authors provide personal accounts of how they found their voices in the Big Apple. Taken together, the stories provide a vivid portrait of a community of authors who continue to fight for Ireland’s place at the top of literary canon.
Whether a pub, tavern, saloon, lounge, canteen—or even your uncle’s basement—every bar in every culture is a launching point for stories. In this anthology, Read650’s editor Edward McCann has a dozen bar stories on tap, from a dozen talented writers. These pieces were originally performed live for a full house at The Cell Theater in New York City, and Read650 shows on wide-ranging topics are produced at venues around the country. You can learn about submission deadlines and upcoming events on our website or Facebook page. Please help spread the word about the spoken word.