Tonight at the Drama Festival, we welcome the Ray Leonard Players with their production of ‘Eclipsed’ by Patricia Burke Brogan.
Outlined by a present-day prologue and epilogue, the play is set in 1963 in a
convent laundry at St. Paul’s Home for Penitent Women in Killmacha, Ireland.
Eclipsed explores the poignant and sometimes humorous story of young
pregnant, unwed mothers consigned to work as ‘penitents’ in church-run
laundries. Supervised by nuns, these women were treated as virtual slaves
and their infants were forcibly put up for adoption. After seeing the goings
on in the laundries as a young novice, playwright Patricia Burke Brogan
decided to highlight the plight of these women. Eclipsed was one of the first
plays to tell the story of the Magdalene Laundries.
Established in 2019, The Ray Leonard Players was founded to honour the legacy of
the late, great director Ray Leonard, who was synonymous with drama in Claremorris
throughout his life. Ray was a director, producer and mentor who made an outstanding
contribution to drama, musicals and stagecraft. In keeping with Ray’s deep sense of
community the group have formed a unique collaboration with Claremorris Men’s Shed
who have designed and built the set for this play. In 2023 the group qualified for the
All-Ireland Confined Finals with ‘The Kings of the Kilburn High Road’, and in December
2023 they won the All-Ireland One-Act Confined Finals with ‘A Night Without Stars’.
RunningTime: 1 hour 50 minutes
