Simon Doyle

Seventeen-year-old Victor Callahan holds a secret as ancient as the shadows. Employed as a night porter in a quiet Irish nursing home, the teenager watches over a group of men he once knew a long time ago. Victor has orchestrated their reunion for a final farewell, a goodbye to those whose lives have shaped him through the years. But can he keep his secret from Lakeshore Manor's oldest resident, James O'Carroll? As he cares for these remnants of his past, memories of a bygone era haunt him - of wild adventures on the rugged Irish coast, of forbidden love hidden beneath the threat of eternal night, and of a shipwreck that changes everything... Gloria Pinto, the night nurse, doesn't like him. But maybe she has her own secrets. THIS IS NOT A VAMPIRE STORY weaves a tale of timeless bonds, the cost of immortality, and the lengths we go to for love. But is love more important than life? Victor is about to find out.

Dean O'Donnell is a wallflower with a secret and a voice that could steal the show. Preferring to blend into the background at his high school, his world tilts on its axis when he is chosen for a major solo in the upcoming Christmas choir performance. His quiet life is further disturbed when he receives a Secret Santa gift, and an unexpected friendship forms. Ben Hunter is the boy next door, well-liked but lonely. He wrestles with unspoken feelings for Dean and a family crisis that’s tearing him apart. When he takes a job at the local cinema to help his family out of a desperate situation, his academic life begins to crumble under the strain. But that’s the least of his worries. As the holiday season unfolds, so do their feelings for each other. But with Dean's anxiety escalating, and Ben's life turning more chaotic, their differences seem more apparent than ever. Can they navigate their personal challenges and embrace the feelings growing between them? Or will this winter be the season of missed chances and what-ifs?

Dean O'Donnell is a wallflower with a secret and a voice that could steal the show. Preferring to blend into the background at his high school, his world tilts on its axis when he is chosen for a major solo in the upcoming Christmas choir performance. His quiet life is further disturbed when he receives a Secret Santa gift, and an unexpected friendship forms. Ben Hunter is the boy next door, well-liked but lonely. He wrestles with unspoken feelings for Dean and a family crisis that’s tearing him apart. When he takes a job at the local cinema to help his family out of a desperate situation, his academic life begins to crumble under the strain. But that’s the least of his worries. As the holiday season unfolds, so do their feelings for each other. But with Dean's anxiety escalating, and Ben's life turning more chaotic, their differences seem more apparent than ever. Can they navigate their personal challenges and embrace the feelings growing between them? Or will this winter be the season of missed chances and what-ifs?

HEROIN by Grace Dyas, Trade by Mark O’Halloran, The Art of Swimming by Lynda Radley, Pineapple by Phillip McMahon, I ? Alice ? I by Amy Conroy, The Big Deal edited by Una McKevitt, Oedipus Loves You by Simon Doyle & Gavin Quinn, The Year of Magical Wanking by Neil WatkinsEdited and introduced by Thomas ConwayThis anthology comprises eight new plays by Irish playwrights premièred between the years 2006 and 2011. These playwrights ride, however, in no slipstream of the identifiably Irish play. Here, the enterprise of playwriting itself is being re-imagined. Here, above all else, is a commitment to becoming in the theatre. For all that, each play is concerned with what is unfinished business in Ireland. How astonishing, then, that these plays should revolve for the most part around identity and, in particular, sexual identity. How identity comes into play, how we open up the field of play, how we raise into collective experience the exercise of that play – the urgency in the playwriting would appear to lie precisely here. We can read from the historical moment – from a narrative emphasizing an economic bubble and its hangover – into these plays. Or we can take these playwrights at their word and observe lives lived at the contour of identities in the making. It is for us as readers, just as we have as theatre-goers – frequently scandalized, enthralled, shamed, appalled, unburdened, tickled pink – to decide.