Sole Purpose makes theatre on social and public issues that contributes to social change, explores the dynamics of human relationships and promotes good relations. The company have toured work throughout Ireland, the UK and the USA. Sole Purpose won the Special Jury Prize at Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Festival in 2019 in New York for its production of ‘Blinkered’ by Patricia Byrne.
The Festival of Theatre for Social Change will run from 14th ‐ 20th February 2022 to celebrate the company’s 25 years and to coincide with the annual United Nations World Day of Social Justice on 20th February.
The festival will build on the twin features of Derry’s identity: both as a place of culture as recognised in the City of Culture year 2013 and as a site of historic importance in the struggles for Social Change.
For more information on the festival go to www.solepurpose.org
Smashing Times are delighted to present an interdisciplinary event titled The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII as part of the Festival of Theatre for Social Change.
The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII is a creative re-imagining of moments from the lives of two women during WWII recalling stories of bravery, sacrifice and love amidst the horror of war.
The event features a twenty-minute performance of At Summer’s End by writer Féilim James. This dramatic monologue is told from the perspective of a Jewish-Irish citizen murdered in the Holocaust. Her name was Ettie Steinberg (1914-42). We learn how at a young age her family left Eastern Europe for Dublin, before love led her away to the European mainland. This by turns tender and harrowing portrait of love, loss, and the brutality of war tells one ordinary woman’s extraordinary, and often forgotten, story.
At Summer’s End is followed by a short film screening of The Shoah: A Survivor’s Memory – The World’s Legacy, recounting the story of French woman Simone Veil (1927-2017). The Shoah is adapted by writer, theatre and film-maker Mary Moynihan from a speech delivered by Simone Veil for the second International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, United Nations General Assembly Hall, 28 January 2007. Simone Veil was a French lawyer, politician and feminist, Holocaust survivor and first female President of the European Parliament.
The performance and film are intercut with discussion by the artists with the event followed by a Q and A with the audience to explore the role of the arts in highlighting women’s stories in history and gender equality today.