Owen McCafferty's first collection brings together one short- and four full-length plays set in the author's home city of Belfast.Shoot The Crow'Tragicomedy of character and circumstance that makes McCafferty look like a ribald Northern Irish Chekov.' Guardian.Scenes From The Big Picture'An epic that attempts to put the whole of human life on stage - birth, death, love, sex, work, families - the whole damn thing... McCafferty offers ...

Absence of Women'A fine example of theatre at its small-scale best.' Evening StandardTitanic'Owen McCafferty's rigorous verbatim play provides an antidote to Titanic fatigue... Two months of hearings from 97 witnesses are whittled down to nine... What remains, even after a century, is a disturbing sense of moral ambiguity: 1, 517 dead and no one to blame.' GuardianQuietly'Vibrates with...

Do you want to know why I'm here?Northern Ireland are playing Poland on the TV. Jimmy and Ian, two middle-aged Belfast men, are meeting tonight for the first time. They have a shared past. They need to talk.A powerful story about violence and forgiveness, Quietly marked Owen McCafferty's Abbey Theatre debut, as part of the Great Irish Writers Season, November 2012.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 CHRISTOPHER EWART-BIGGS MEMORIAL PRIZE'An outstanding evening, a landmark play, a thoroughly deserved five stars . . . Owen McCafferty's searing dramatisation is a political thriller with echoes of Greek drama.' Irish TimesOwen McCafferty examines the negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement and weaves potent drama out of this complex, momentous event.what takes courage is to compete...

what if i'm not funny though - what if i go out there and i'm not funnySteve Johnston, guided and inspired by his girlfriend, is a small-time comedian, raw, original and true. Until he's spotted by an agent, who suggests he could be so much more: his act just needs to change. It's a Faustian pact. As tension builds over the course of four gigs, so too do the audiences. But at what cost?Death of a Comedian by Owen McCafferty premiered at the Lyric T...

JP Miller's 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses, adapted brilliantly for the stage by Owen McCafferty.Donal and Mona leave Belfast for a new start in 60s London. Strangers in an unfamiliar city, they fall in love with life, each other and the drink. A whirlwind of discovery starts to spiral out of control as the young alcoholic drags his wife with him into the swamp of addiction - from which only one of them can escape.Owen McCafferty's Days of Wine and Roses...

At 11.40pm on 14 April 1912, the RMS Titanic, on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, struck an iceberg. At 2.20am the following morning, the ship sank. 1,517 people died.In response to the disaster the British Government ordered an immediate inquiry and Lord Mersey was appointed commissioner. The British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry sat from 2 May to 3 July 1912. It took testimony from 97 witnesses.Owen McCafferty's Titanic retells the ...

we're still ourselves when we lieJoan and Tom have been married for nearly thirty years. Tara lies alone while Peter works nights. How far will people go to hear their heart beat again? What does it mean to be unfaithful to those you love?A stark and searing glimpse into two tangled relationships, the unspoken desires, the piercing regrets, and the postponed conversations.Owen McCafferty's Unfaithful premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinb...

Two Belfast lads, Mojo and Mickybo, relive the summer of 1970, when they were growing up in the city, playing headers, building huts and re-enacting cowboy movies. At first, their friendship is immune to the sectarian violence taking place around them. But nobody is safe from it forever... Owen McCafferty's play Mojo Mickybo is an unsentimental portrayal of innocence betrayed by communal hatred. It was first performed at Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin, in October 1998. The production subseque...

McCafferty's break-through play, a tender and comic portrait of love, dignity and emotional damage.Vera is feisty but fading, Ronnie is washed up and permanently half-drunk. Together they run a grubby pub/hotel in present-day Belfast. It is a refuge for the assorted regulars who wash up there, as well as its rickety owners. Today is a day like many before, turning groggily into a night which might erode everyone's ability to cope with each other, or themselves.Owen McCaffer...

- he hadn't forgotten i was there - he just didn't care whether i was there or not - it would've been better him forgetting rather than not caring at allGerry and Iggy face the ends of their lives in a London hostel. As they drift from present concerns - the funeral of an old drinking partner, the relative sizes of their swollen livers, tube routes, street names, God and the lure of Belfast - to remembering ghosts from long ago, we catch a poignant glimpse of what might ha...

sit on the deck - have a few drinks put the world to rights - and watch working-class protestants burn some tyres and sticks and shout some shit - if that can't make a middle-class ex-catholic happy what canTwenty years on from the Belfast Peace Agreement, Tom and Maggie are enjoying a glass of wine or two on Gerry and Rosemary's deck, waiting for the Eleventh Night bonfire to be lit in the estate below. But there is tension in the air; and what these neighbours of old thi...