Playground

PLAYGROUND: THE GMT NEW WRITING FESTIVAL

Our Playground New Writing Festival is back! We’ve got six incredibly talented playwrights lined up this year who have all been tasked with the same goal: To Make Good Theater.

Each of our six playwrights are given just over two months to write a play. Their only constraint is their allotted time of ten minutes and the prompt: “The Happy Mask”. This year, our third year of running Playground, we have decided to up the ante for the playwrights and challenge them to not only write, but cast and direct these short shows in the time that they have.

Our Ringmasters this year are an inspired bunch

  • REX RYAN is the artistic director of and frequent writer and director for GMT, thrilled to throw his hat into the ring.

  • EVA JANE GAFFNEY has been part of several award winning movies and shows in the heart of Dublin theatre, including work on The Lobster, Red Rock, and Sing Street.

  • JADE JORDAN won the Súil Eile Award in 2021 and appears in many movies and other onscreen appearances, including the short film she wrote The Color Between.

  • JOHN DORAN is an actor and comedian who has played the various stages of Dublin theatre as well as gracing the screen with films like Something Doesn’t Feel Right

  • JED MURRAY has had many TV and film appearances including featuring on HBO’s Game of Thrones and Anu Productions’ The Boys of Foley Street.

  • CALLUM MAXWELL is the artistic director of new play company Ragged Ruin, joining the GMT scene after a successful run of Peter Pan at the Gate Theatre

Playground Festival is one of our most beloved traditions here at GMT, and we are so excited to see what the writers will thrill us with this year. No two shows will be the same - this is a festival where we dive into the wilderness of play-making and hopefully come out the other end inspired to go back into our lives with new whimsy, new life, and new excitement.