The Wrens

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The Wrens is a magical-realist play inspired by the Wrens of Curragh - an outcast group of women who lived in holes in the ground known as nests. Made homeless by the famine, these women where forced to survive by what was available to them, sex and thieving. Although local townsfolk availed of their ‘services’, this was always staunchly denied; instead casting the women as witches. Shame, cruelty and moralistic hypocrisy won out, culminating in a yearly smoking out of the Wrens.

Each layer represents a different aspect of the story, the gorse where they live, the red to show anger, the wren stealing, all incased in the flame of a match set a light, representing the dark destruction of their home.

Photography: Jack Connolly