Where Do You Stand? – Oxfam explores key issues of our time in interactive drama for Culture Night

This Friday (September 21st) Oxfam Ireland will present simultaneous Culture Night events in both Belfast and Dublin, with an interactive theatre experience exploring some of the key issues of our time.

This thought-provoking event – entitled ‘Where Do You Stand?’ – invites the audience to consider their place in the world while hearing global stories of poverty, displacement, and conflict, influenced by Oxfam’s work around the globe.

Oxfam Ireland’s Content Officer Joanne O’Connor, who penned the drama specially for Culture Night, said: “The play is based on two powerful first-person stories from inspiring women we work with from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda – women who have suffered unimaginable tragedy but overcame to help others survive and even thrive. 

“The fictionalised versions of their stories will be told in familiar accents against an Irish landscape to help bring home the faraway stories we hear again and again in the news – accompanied by images and stories from our own work around the world.

“The audience will certainly feel a strong connection with the drama through an empathy with the characters and their situations. The universal themes of family, separation, loss and hopes for a brighter future will touch a nerve and resonate with people here.” 

The drama consists of two separate monologues, each lasting approximately 10 minutes, with performances repeated at intervals through the evening. 

Actors Amilia Stewart (in Dublin) and Eileen McCloskey (in Belfast) play the role of Rita, a former midwife who fled the violence in her home country when the war intensified and is now an Oxfam-assisted hygiene worker educating a refugee community on the importance of good sanitation. The role of Flonira – who was widowed during the conflict, and used funds earned from an Oxfam-supported cooperative to help pay for her son’s college studies – is played in Dublin by Ciara O'Callaghan and in Belfast by Cathy Brennan-Bradley. 

Left to Right: Cathy Brennan Bradley, Eileen McCloskey, Ciara O'Callaghan, Amilia Stewart

Admission is free and the events will take place at Atlas Language School, Portabello House, Portabello, Dublin 2, from 7 – 10pm; and at the Oxfam Books shop in 35 Ann Street, Belfast BT1 4EB from 5pm – 9.30pm.

For more details about Culture Night, visit www.culturenight.ie and www.culturenightbelfast.com 

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS

Oxfam has spokespeople available for interview. For more information or to arrange an interview please contact: 

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: Alice Dawson-Lyons, on +353 (0) 83 198 1869 / alice.dawsonlyons@oxfam.org

NORTHERN IRELAND: Phillip Graham on 0044 (0) 7841 102535 / phillip.graham@oxfam.org