Eclipsed at Corrib Theatre

To kick off a season framed upon remembrance, resistance, and restitution, Corrib Theatre presents the Northwest Premiere of Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed, directed by Corrib Artistic Director Gemma Whelan. Plumbing this appalling, Ireland-specific institution that’s a shockingly relevant parallel to current U.S. incarceration and immigration practices, as well as reproductive rights policy, the all-female cast includes Victoria Alvarez-Chacon, Lorraine Bahr, Wynee Hu, Sasha Neufeld, Dainichia Noreault, Lucy Paschall, and Jamie Rea. Eclipsed runs for four weeks, September 20 through October 13, at New Expressive Works, 810 SE Belmont St., in Portland, Oregon.

In a Magdalene Laundry, where the nuns regard them as mindless vessels of evil and their infants are forcibly put up for adoption, a group of young unwed Irish mothers struggle, resist, and strive to overcome the onerous conditions imposed on them. Based on true accounts and written by an ex-nun who worked there, it’s a story of both pain and hope.

Artistic Director Gemma Whelan, who will direct Eclipsed with an all-female cast and design team, has a long history with the play. Whelan directed the San Francisco Bay Area’s premiere of Eclipsed with Wilde Irish Productions in 2003, which also ran at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco (2004). In Portland, Corrib Theatre produced a 2016 staged reading of the play under Whelan’s direction.

Authors

• Patricia Burke Brogan