Theatre and Performing Arts

Tinderbox Theatre Company is an award-winning touring theatre company, based in Belfast. They were founded in 1988 to develop, commission, and produce innovative and challenging theatre plays and live performances. They also provide professional expertise to support emerging and established playwrights and offers Playground and Play Machine programmes and workshops to empower and inspire the individual and liberate the imagination.

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The Lyric Theatre is Belfast’s primary self-producing theatre. It was originally formed in 1951 as The Lyric Players, by Mary O’Malley with her husband, P Pearse O’Malley, to promote Irish poetic drama, and continues to produce professional drama informed by diverse cultural traditions. They moved into their purpose-built premises on Ridgeway Street in 1968, and again into the current development in 2011. For decades, The Lyric has helped launch numerous internationally acclaimed playwrights, poets and actors, premiering the works of playwrights including Jennifer Johnston, Marie Jones, Christina Reid, and Rosemary Jenkinson, and actresses such as Maggie Cronin, Sheila McGibbon, Roma Tomelty, and Stella McCusker.

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Jo Egan is a playwright, director, producer and practitioner from Dublin who relocated to Belfast in 1996. She has been heavily involved in the community theatre scene in Belfast since then, working with alternative narratives that do not traditionally feature in theatre and story-telling. Some of her most significant projects include 'The Wedding Community Play' and 'Crimea Square', and a play, 'Sweeties', which she wrote as part of Flesh and Blood Women.

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The Belfast Civic Arts Theatre first opened as The Mask Theatre in Linenhall Street 1944. It relocated several times, before finally settling in Botanic Avenue, where it opened with a performance on 17th April 1961 and continued until its closure in 1999. In addition to hosting touring arts shows, the Arts Theatre was home to the Ulster Actors’ Company Ltd., who produced and performed a variety of popular in-house plays under the direction of Roy Heayberd.

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Replay Theatre Company is a Belfast-based touring company formed in 1988 to write and produce original theatre for younger audiences. The company tours a variety of venues at schools, youth clubs and community centres enabling inclusive access and engagement with theatre and the arts for children across Northern Ireland and beyond.

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Christina Reid was a playwright from Belfast who captured working class experiences of the Troubles in her writings. She wrote scripts for stage, television, and radio platforms, including 'Did You Hear the One About the Irishman?' which won the Ulster Television Drama Award (1980), and 'The Last of a Dyin' Race' which won the Giles Cooper Award (1986). Her first stage-produced play, 'Tea in a China Cup', about 12th July traditions passed down through three generations of Protestant women, was produced by the Lyric Theatre in 1983 and won the Thames Television Playwriting Award.

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Carol Moore has worked in the creative industries for the past 40 years as an actor, director, writer, filmmaker and workshop facilitator. She was a co-founder and later co- Artistic Director of Charabanc Theatre Company (1983-95). During her freelance career, she acted for many leading Northern Irish theatre companies, directed plays including at the Lyric Theatre, and was Creative Consultant for the Belfast based organisation, Red Lead Arts.

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Maeve Murphy is an award-winning film director and screen writer from Belfast. Her film, 'Silent Grace' (2001), about the hunger strikes in Armagh gaol in 1980/81, was critically acclaimed and ranked no. 38 in The Irish Times Best 50 Irish films ever made. Maeve produced many works that featured on Channel 4, UTV, RTÉ and some of which were screened at the London and Edinburgh film festivals. Her film 'Beyond the Fire' (2009), which dealt with the topic of sexual assault won the 2010 Best International Feature at the Garden State Film Festival in New Jersey, and she won an award of excellence for her film 'Siobhan' (2017) in the One Reeler Short Film competition in LA.

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Rosemary Jenkinson is an award-winning playwright and short story writer from Belfast. Her plays include 'The Bonefire', which won the Stewart Parker BBC Radio Award, 'Planet Belfast', 'Here Comes the Night', 'Michelle and Arlene', 'May the Road Rise Up', and 'Lives in Translation'. She was 2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.

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Olivia Nash MBE has been an actress and performer in Northern Ireland for over 40 years. She grew up in Larne, where she first entered community drama with the Larne Drama Circle and was later a member of the Ulster Group Theatre alongside James Young and Doreen Hepburn. In 1991, Olivia Nash starred as the character 'Ma'' in the 'Hole in the Wall Gang'. This evolved into the well-known BBC television series 'Give My Head Peace', which ran from 1998. Olivia Nash is the Vice President of the Northern Ireland Hospice. She received an MBE for services to theatre and charity in 2006.

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Charabanc Theatre Company (1983-1995) was founded by a group of five Belfast-based actresses, fuelled to create more opportunities for women in theatre. The company researched and developed plays based on local issues, history, and culture, initially in Belfast, but later drawing on wider women's experiences in Europe and America.

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This archive was kindly donated by Carol Moore, who coordinated and acted as creative consultant for Red Lead Arts, a production company specialising in community theatre and arts engagement.

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Derry Frontline was a branch of the Frontline theatre companies established in working class Manchester, Derry and Dublin by Dan Baron Cohen between 1986-88 as an 'artivist' platform for cultural self-determination. Plays by Derry Frontline evolved from initial phases of community story-sharing and exploration, largely around women’s liberation and Irish self-determination. Key members of Derry Frontline included Jim Keys, Mary Gallagher, Locky Morris, Carol Deehan and Ann Deehan. 

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Kabosh Theatre Company was established in 1994 and has since become a leading independent theatre company in Northern Ireland, bringing heritage to life and engaging with the legacy of the Troubles to further reconciliation. They integrate new writing and unusual spaces that promote inclusivity of access and participation in the arts.

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The Community Theatre archives at the Linen Hall contain materials relating to a wide range of groups and organisations working in the arts in Northern Ireland since the 1970s. Northern Ireland has a rich history of community theatre that interprets and reimagines local experiences, culture, and political and social issues. Women have often been the backbone of these community organisations, forming approximately 90% of participants in community drama, and in many cases, leading these projects. women, and many taking leadership roles.

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DubbelJoint Productions was an independent theatre company founded in 1991 by Pam Brighton, Marie Jones, and Mark Lambert. Based in West Belfast, DubbelJoint sourced new writing on local issues around culture and identity.

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Louise Mathews is a Belfast-based singer, actress, and youth worker, originally from Ardoyne. She graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, 2005, and has starred in feature films including 'Here Before' (2020) and 'IRA King of Nothing' (2006), and the BBC television series 'In Cold Blood'. Louise Mathews collaborated with Tinderbox Theatre Company to write 'Immaculate', a memoir tracing the death of her uncle in London, performed as part of the Féile an Earraigh Arts Festival (2021). Louise Mathews is the director of Time to Shine Drama, writing and producing plays and facilitating programmes to promote children’s confidence and self-esteem through drama.

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Julie Martina Dutkiewicz is a playwright from Belfast, whose writing aims to effect change on social issues. In 2018, Dutkiewicz was commissioned by Women’s Aid Federation Northern Ireland, to write, '#Honest35', which adapted a true story of one woman’s experience of domestic violence. Following time spent as a drama teacher in Hong Kong, she engaged with Hydebank Women’s prison in a drama therapy programme. Her other projects include drama commissions with Tinderbox Theatre Company, such as 'Blue For a Boy', written for the 15 Minutes Play Festival at the Ulster Hall in 2012, short film 'Gone', produced by Kabosh with Future Screens NI (2020) and 'The Boy on the Bridge' (2021).

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Marie Jones OBE is a Belfast-based actress and playwright. She was one of the core founding members of Charabanc Theatre Company in 1983, and in 1991 she co-founded DubbelJoint Productions alongside Pam Brighton and Mark Lambert. Marie Jones has written a number of plays for theatre and television, such as 'Women On The Verge Of HRT', 'A Night in November', 'Now You’re Talkin’', 'The Hamster Wheel', and 'Weddin’s Weeins and Wakes'.

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Co-founded in 1987 by Artistic Director Zoe Seaton, a drama graduate of Kent University and Portstewart native, Big Telly Theatre Company has become one of the longest established theatre companies in Northern Ireland and celebrated its 30th anniversary year in 2017. In 2018, Zoe Seaton was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Ulster University for her contribution to drama and the arts in Northern Ireland.

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Helen Lewis (2016-2009) was a dancer and choreographer, well regarded as a pioneer of modern dance in Northern Ireland, where she moved to in 1947 after her liberation from Auschwitz concentration camp. A member of the Lyric Players and founder of the Belfast Modern Dance Group, she introduced an experimental European style of contemporary dance never before seen in Northern Ireland.

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Mary O’Malley (1918 - 2006) was an Irish theatre director who along with her husband, Pearse, co-founded the eminent Belfast Lyric Players Theatre, today known as the Lyric Theatre, which has remained the only full-time producing theatre in Northern Ireland. During her lifetime, Mary was a pioneering figure in the Northern Irish arts and cultural scene and passionately championed existing and upcoming talent for more than fifty years. Over the decades, she helped launch and foster the careers of numerous acclaimed playwrights, poets, and actors.

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In 1997 Patricia Byrne co-founded the Derry-based theatre company Sole Purpose Productions, seeking to explore human relationships, raise awareness of contemporary issues, and support social justice through theatre. To date, their plays have explored challenging topics around marginalised communities, domestic violence, addiction, gender politics, and more. ‘Blinkered,’ a play about mental health and suicide, written by Patricia Byrne, was performed at ‘Origins’ the first Irish Theatre Festival in New York, 2019, where it won the Special Jury Prize. Patricia Byrne was awarded the Noel Walsh Freedom Award in 2012 and the Helen Harris Freedom Award in 2014 for her significant contributions to LGBTQ+ rights through theatre work with Sole Purpose Productions.

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Felicity McCall is a writer from Derry who began her career as a journalist and broadcaster with the BBC. She presented on radio and television for over 20 years, covering stories around the conflict in Northern Ireland, before stepping back from broadcasting to focus on writing full time. Since then, she has authored 22 published works, which include novels, non-fiction, play scripts, a graphic novel, and anthologies. Her work is often informed by interview research, and comments on social and environmental issues. In 2011 she was awarded the Heritage Lottery Fund 'Best Heritage Project' for her play 'We Were Brothers' which told the stories of World War One soldiers from Unionist and Nationalist backgrounds in Northern Ireland.

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Margaret D’Arcy (1918-2018) was a Northern Irish actress from South Belfast. After studying drama in London, she returned to Belfast to become a leading member of the Ulster Group Players, with whom she acted throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, starring in roles such as the lead character Diana in CK Munro’s play of the same name, and Dr Anice Hollingshead in ‘Blind Man’s Buff.’ D’Arcy joined the Lyric Players in 1976, and had a prolific radio career, spanning from 1949-1990s. She appeared in several BBC television dramas, including ‘The Precious Blood,’ in 1996, and later in such films as, ‘Wild about Harry’ (2000), and Puckoon (2002).

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Aisling Ghéar Compántas Amharclainne was founded in 1997 by Gearóid Ó Caireallain with the aim of contributing to the development of the Irish language through the provision of Irish language theatre productions. Since its establishment, it has been the resident theatre company based in the Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, an Irish language arts and cultural centre situated on the Falls Road in West Belfast.

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Pamela Ballantine is a television presenter and newspaper columnist from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who has hosted a range of UTV programmes for over 35 years.

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The posters in this online collection have been selected from the Linen Hall Library’s expansive Theatre & Performing Arts archive and cover a wide-ranging period from the 1980s through to the 2000s.

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Prime Cut Productions, an independent theatre company based in Belfast, was formed in 1992 by Jackie Doyle, Aidan Lacey, Simon Magill, and Stuart Marshall. Originally operating as Mad Cow Productions, the company produced a wide repertoire of challenging and eclectic performances inspired by marginalised society and culture in Northern Ireland.

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Irish actress, Siobhan McKenna (Siobhán Giollamhuire Nic Cionnaith) was born in Belfast in 1923 and grew up in Galway. Siobhan McKenna appeared in both English and Irish language plays throughout her career, and was well known for her appearances in productions put on by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin (The National Theatre of Ireland), as well as performances in films 'Doctor Zhivago' (1965), 'King of Kings' (1961) and 'Of Human Bondage' (1964). She died on 16th November 1986 in Dublin.

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Keike Twisselmann is a German born multilaterally creating artist who lived and studied in Belfast during the 1990s and continues to perform and exhibit her art throughout Northern Ireland and Europe. Her body of work includes painting, poetry of mind, film, performance art, automatic writing, philosophy, politics and the laws of nature and humanity: noise and silence.

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This archive contains ephemera from Northern Ireland dance groups, dating 1977-2002. It includes leaflets, programmes, photographs and magazine articles relating to Helen Lewis, Hoi Polloi, Community Dance ’96, Ulster Youth Dance, Adele Sloan’s School of Ballet, and Maiden Voyage.

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Victoria Gleason is an actress, script writer and arts facilitator. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and has been involved in the theatre and performing arts for over 20 years. Victoria began her journey as an actor and script writer at BIFHE, before studying drama and scriptwriting at Queen’s University. She was part of Ransom Theatre Company’s ‘Write on the Edge’ programme for new and emerging female writers. It was here and in Queen’s at the Seamus Heaney Centre, that she developed her first play 'First Date,' which dealt with disability and relationships. Her next full-length play was inspired whilst she was part of a living history project at Downpatrick Gaol. More recently, Victoria Gleason was the voice on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Tongue and Talk,’ directed by Catherine Harvey Green, and she is currently developing a children’s book.

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Sinéad O’Donnell is a Belfast based Irish artist who, for over 20 years, has worked in performance, installation, and site and time-based art that explores identity, borders, and barriers through encounters with territory and the territorial.

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Féile an Phobail (Festival of the People) is an annual community arts festival in West Belfast. Established in 1988, the inaugural festival comprised a simple parade of bands and floats and street parties in West Belfast. Since then the festival has grown into one of the largest community festivals in Ireland.

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