Stage
STAGE PLAYS (PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED)
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN (Dublin: New Island Press, 1998, paperback ISBN 1-874597-70-7). Donoghue's second work for theatre was premiered by Glasshouse Productions at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre on 18 April 1996, and received its US premiere at Outward Spiral Theatre, Minneapolis, on 14 April 2000; it was produced in San Francisco in 2003 by the Shee Theatre Company and in Rochester, NY in 2010 by Bread and Water Theatre. A memory play in which a vaudeville star on the night of her final comeback relives her two marriages (one to a man, one to a woman), LADIES AND GENTLEMEN was inspired by the late nineteenth-century male impersonator Annie Hindle.
'Extraordinary love story... she tells it wonderfully: simply, tenderly and eloquently... it grabs the interest, the pace never flags' – SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN plays wonderful theatrical games, gently blurring the sexual boundaries... a deeply satisfying and moving meditation on life in love and theatre’ – SUNDAY TRIBUNE
‘A must-see for anyone who enjoys a good, tragic love story, and a sure thing for those seeking the emotional purge of laughter through tears.’ – SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN is available in paperback from New Island Books (Ireland).
I KNOW MY OWN HEART, in SEEN AND HEARD: SIX NEW PLAYS BY IRISH WOMEN, ed. by Cathy Leeney (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2001, 0-9534-2573-8). Donoghue's first play, which was premiered by Glasshouse Productions at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre in March 1993, is very loosely based on Helena Whitbread's book of the same name (Virago, 1988), a selection of the secret diaries (1817-24) of Regency lesbian eccentric Anne Lister.
'A witty, humorous and affectionate celebration of this fiercely independent and self-aware woman' – SUNDAY TRIBUNE
I KNOW MY OWN HEART is available in the anthology SEEN AND HEARD from Carysfort Press (Ireland).
STAGE PLAYS (PRODUCED, UNPUBLISHED)
DON’T DIE WONDERING. The one-act stage version of Donoghue’s radio drama premiered at the Second Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in a production by DAYMS at the Teacher’s Club, 14-16 May 2005.
KISSING THE WITCH. Donoghue's adaptation of her fairy-tale book of the same name (1997) was commissioned by and premiered at San Francisco's Magic Theatre on 9 June 2000. It received its first Canadian production at Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto in March 2002. An excerpt appears in OUTSPOKEN: A CANADIAN COLLECTION OF LESBIAN SCENES AND MONOLOGUES, ed. Susan G. Cole (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2010).