BELFAST GIRLS Begins 11/17 at Corrib Theatre

Launching their 2017-18 season with a gripping historical drama that nods to today's relevant questions of how the elite endeavor to remove undesirable residents from their country, Corrib Theatre presents Jaki McCarrick's U.S. West Coast Premiere of Belfast Girls. Corrib Theatre's production of Belfast Girls runs for four weeks, from November 17 through December 10 at Shaking the Tree Theatre.

Set onboard the ship, the Inchinnan, five young women depart Belfast, Ireland, during the Irish Famine with the hope of a better life in their hearts. The ship sails in 1850 from famine-stricken Ireland bound for Australia under a British government scheme to purportedly help "orphan" girls find a better life. En route, these strong and high-spirited women discover that they have been conveniently gotten rid of. Together, they must confront the demons of the life they've left behind, survive the endless voyage and take strength in each other to face what lies ahead. Based on true accounts, it is a play about emigration and the female experience of the Famine, and of the powers-that-be that scapegoat and victimize their most vulnerable during a crisis.

"I was moved by this play, because it depicted a group of high-spirited women who come to realize that the powers-that-be in their country have spat them out," said Gemma Whelan, Belfast Girls director and Corrib Theatre Artistic Director. "It resonated with recent events in Ireland and the U.S., such as the financial collapse, which bailed out big banks and corporations, while scapegoating the less powerful. It continues to have resonance in the daily news as the U.S. powers-that-be attempt to shape immigration laws that reject certain "undesirable" applicants, and privilege others." She continues, "We're thrilled that the playwright, Jaki McCarrick is coming over from Ireland for opening night. It's a testament to Corrib's growing visibility as a forum for new Irish plays, and for works written by women and with strong female roles."

Between the years 1848 and 1851 over four thousand Irish females took passage on ships from Ireland to Australia under the Orphan Emigration Scheme, established by Earl Grey. This action had the effect of relieving many of the workhouses and poorhouses of Ireland (already full to the brim with people seeking respite from the ravages of the 'Great Famine'), and of providing 'new blood' for the Colonies - wives, servants, farm-workers. The women who left were more generally known as 'orphan girls', though many were neither orphans nor, strictly speaking, girls. The most notorious and riotous amongst these - both in transit and on arrival in Australia - were known as the Belfast girls.

Culture Northern Ireland offers an in-depth article about the play, an interview with the playwright and the history it covers for its London premiere HERE.

Mayo Orphan Girls, a website about 137 girls sent on from the County Mayo workhouses to Australia as part of the Famine Orphan Emigration Scheme (1848-1850) states:

The Inchinnan (the ship on which Belfast Girls takes place) departed Plymouth on 4 November 1848 and arrived in Sydney on 13 February 1849, with 164 orphans from ten counties: Donegal, Dublin, Fermanagh, Galway, Kildare, King's (Offaly), Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, and Sligo. The need for domestic female labour in the mid-nineteenth century in Australia, along with the related gender imbalance in the colonies, coincided with an excess of female inhabitants in the workhouses in Ireland. The result was an emigration scheme, under the direction of the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, that sent 4,114 girls aged between 14 and 20 years, from 117 Irish workhouses, to the ports of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in the years 1848 to 1850.

Regina Buccola, Associate Professor and Chair, Literature and Languages Roosevelt University, Chicago [excerpt]: Jaki McCarrick's Belfast Girls is a materialist feminist play in the tradition of Caryl Churchill's Fen: an unflinching exploration of the lethal combination of colonialist class hierarchy, patriarchal oppression, and the female misogyny generated in women trapped between the two. Like the women working the East Anglian potato fields of Churchill's Fen, McCarrick's mid-nineteenth century refugees are fleeing the "famine" of Ireland for the promised land of upward mobility in Australia, aboard the Inchinnan. They fall to snarling and snapping at one another like starved, caged animals after initially forming an uneasy sisterhood born of perceived common cause. Age, education, marital status and employment history ultimately stratify McCarrick's Belfast "orphans," causing them to destroy the quasi-familial bonds they have initially forged on shipboard.

Materialist feminist analysis explores the matrix of class, race, and gender oppressions. With a Jamaican-born woman of mixed-race descent onboard the Inchinnan, along with former prostitutes and a degraded member of the bourgeoisie, McCarrick covers all of these bases with deft characterization and subtle exploration of the social systems that work to circumscribe everyone escaping the famine on the Inchinnan's ark.

Their eyes wide open, McCarrick's Belfast Girls are not defeated: "If it's not us who will have those freedoms you talked of . . . then maybe our daughters will. That's the important thing."

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