Belfast Girls

The year is 1850, Belfast, Ireland. Two hundred women are departing on a ship bound for Australia under the Earl Grey Orphan Emigration Scheme. Escaping workhouses overpopulated during the Great Famine, they are set to become “mistresses of their own destiny” as servants, farm-workers – and, indeed, wives – in the Colonies. BELFAST GIRLS by Irish playwright, Jaki McCarrick, focuses on five of the most “notorious and riotous” of these women and their three month journey in the bowels of the Inchinnan ship. For some the voyage offers a fresh start, but others find they cannot escape the memory of the lives they've left behind.

Part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany. Partially funded by the Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf and Sparkasse Düsseldorf Kunst- und Kulturstiftung.

Gefördert von der Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Düsseldorf und durch die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.

THE CAST

THE CREATIVES

The Playwright: Jaki McCarrick

Jaki McCarrick is an award-winning Irish writer of plays, poetry and fiction. Winner of the Papatango Prize for New Writing for her play “Leopoldville”, Jaki’s play “Belfast Girls” was developed at the National Theatre Studio, London and has been staged 14 times internationally. Shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the BBC Tony Doyle Award, “Belfast Girls” made its New York premiere at the Irish Repertory Theatre in 2022, and opens again in New York in 2023. The play opens at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in January 2024. Her play “The Naturalists” premiered in New York in 2018.