Dylan Coburn Gray's New Play ABSENT THE WRONG Will Premiere at Dublin Fringe Festival
Performances run 10 - 24 September.
By: Stephi Wild Aug. 15, 2022
Awoman looking for her child is lied to. An artist pitches a memorial that's never built. A landlord raises rents. A parrot disappears. (Or does it?) Thousands of children disappear. (No question this time.) There's family reunions, collective actions, inexplicable Mormons.
Both intimate and sweeping, raw and heady, Absent The Wrong is about 70 years of adoptees looking for answers. It's about being the only person in the family photo who isn't white and not daring to ask why, about having multiple heritages but knowing nothing about any of them. (So are they really heritages? Can you inherit loss?)
It's about Ireland, Irishness, about a century of destroying families in the name of The Family. It's about wondering, searching, loving, losing, fighting, losing some more, and sometimes finally winning when all seems lost.
Written by Dylan Coburn Gray, winner of the Verity Bargate Award for Citysong, this is a play which marries formal playfulness to serious purposes. Developed with performers throughout 2021, Absent The Wrong is conceived partly as a time-capsule of the response to the publication of the Mother and Baby Homes Report. The hurt, the anger, the struggle for straight answers.
But it's not just straightforward reportage or documentary - leave that to reporters and documentarians. It's an artistic meditation on memory, on archives, on history - on what the official record doesn't show, has never shown, can't show. It's about gaps, generational and informational, - how natural it is to want to bridge them, how hard it is to do.
Absent The Wrong will premiere in The Abbey Theatre, Peacock Stage, performed by Curtis-Lee Ashqar, Sheikh Bah, Noelle Brown, Caoimhe Coburn Gray, Kwaku Fortune, Sophie Lenglinger, Leah Minto and Emmanuel Okoye
Funded by the Arts Council/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon, produced by Once Off Productions. Developed at FRINGE LAB.
Creative Team:
Written by Dylan Coburn Gray
Directed by Veronica Coburn
Directing Associate Claire O'Reilly
Set Design by Molly O'Cathain
Costume Design by Pai Rathaya
Lighting Design by Suzie Cummins
Sound by Jenny O'Malley
Cast:
Jolly Abraham - Fumni
Curtis-Lee Ashqar - Thomas
Sheik-Mikailu Bah - Michael, King, Man
Noelle Brown - Nancy
Caoimhe Coburn Gray - Ciara, Woman
Kwaku Fortune - Richie
Colleen Keogh - Jill
Sophie Lenglinger - Anna
Leah Minto - Alice
Emmanuel Okoye - Edward
Booking Information
Venue: The Abbey Theatre, Peacock stage
Dates: 10 - 24 September
Previews: 10 & 12 September, 7pm
Times: 13 - 17 September & 19 - 24 September, 7pm
Other performances: 17 September, 1pm
Tickets: Previews €12 / Other performances €16/€14
Dublin Fringe Festival is an annual curated, multi-disciplinary festival and year-round organisation focusing on fresh and innovative approaches to the arts from Irish and international makers. This September the festival hosts its 2022 edition staging awesome new work by 430 artists are set to overrun the city with unmissable art experiences for 16 days and nights this September in 27+ venues across town, outdoors and in your place to make sure that the Dublin Fringe magic is still accessible to everyone. Booking open now at fringefest.com (or at 1800 374 643 from August).
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