In the quiet room of the Armagh City Youth Hostel, the instructors have convened for a very important meeting: there is a bottle of cherry wine that must be consumed. There’s one problem: there’s no corkscrew in the hostel and it’s after 6PM in Armagh! After much consideration, they’re heading off to McAnerney’s, the Catholic […]
I think I’ve been procrastinating on writing these blog posts because I want to refuse to believe everything has happened already. I don’t want to process the experience and understand the end. It aches to reflect on the impact of these past few weeks. It aches to think of Sunday. It aches to realize the […]
I can’t believe this!!!! It’s mind-blowing that this trip is coming to an end. I loved it here so much. I have been told before that I am high maintenance (which may or may not be true) so leaving everything familiar at home and flying 3,000 miles away was a pretty big risk for me. […]
This is my last blog post! Eep! I’m aware that “eep” is not technically a word, and SpellCheck is equally aware of the fact, but it’s really the only onomatopoeic way I can think of to describe the extremely conflicting emotions that I’m having right at the moment. Do I want to leave Armagh? Absolutely […]
You mean it’s over? This Sunday, we leave Northern Ireland and return to the States. It’s as if I’m returning to another life in a parallel universe; everything here feels familiar and yet noticeably different. When I go home, coins will be disused, debit cards will work more often, I’ll be able to drive, and […]
Today, at the John Hewitt International Summer School, my colleagues and I presented the culmination of our month of work in Armagh to a crowd of unsuspecting strangers. I know, right? We were pretty stoked going into it, as you’d expect, since many of us aren’t actors. But, still, filing up the stairs from the […]
(Please note, the following has nothing to do with Northern Ireland, playwriting, or anything for which this class exists. It is purely silliness for silliness’s sake and both a jibe at and a tribute to a good friend. Abandon all deep thought, ye who enter here.) So how does one out-meta Chris Warman? This is […]
FEAR. Nervous. Anxious. Sweaty. Relieved. Exhausted. Thrilled. Exhilarated. Hyper. Starving. Gratitude. These were the main emotions I felt today. In approximately that order. Now I’m not saying I can outdo the mushball in our group but I am going to give it a try. Thank you so much Terri, Joan and Kimberly for not falling […]
We did it. We performed today. We gathered with an audience of about fifty people in a little box of a theatre (thank God it was one of the only air-conditioned rooms in Armagh) and sat all in a row, staring back at the risers where our compatriots and our critics perched. Our scripts were […]
For those of you not familiar, my adoration of the word “swag” is marginally inappropriate. I use it to describe things that may or may not actually have swag, from a car I pass while walking down the road to a particularly impressive sandwich. But after presenting this afternoon at the JHISS in front of […]
