Dundalk Theatre Workshop
present


Faith Healer


by Brian Friel


Wednesday,
8 March 2023
8.00 p.m.




Important: The theatre doors will close strictly at 8.00!
Please be seated by 7.50.

(Please note: no food or drink will be allowed in the theatre during any performance, as this is a competition.)



The Play

Language is at the heart of this play in which three characters deliver four monologues. The first and last are spoken by Frank Hardy, an itinerant faith healer who is at the mercy of a gift he cannot control and who eventually, and fatefully, returns to his native Ireland. In between Frank’s speeches we hear different versions of his story first from his wife, Grace, and then from his manager, Teddy. Grace, although the product of an Irish legal family, has opted for a harum-scarum existence to become Frank’s support and victim. Teddy, meanwhile, is a chipper Cockney from the seedy fringes of show business driven by a strange love for his wayward client.

Faith Healer emphasises the uncertainty of personal history and individual witness mirrored in four conflicting monologues.

Cast

Grace

Pauline Clarke

Teddy

Tim Ahern

Frank

Fergus Mullen


Crew

Director

Bernard Dunne

Lighting Design and Sound

Seamus Farrell

Stage Crew

Karen Shields
Anja Schille
Oleg Kuzyk

Poster Design

Sinead Rice

Wardrobe

Aine Corcoran

Production Assistant

Rosetta Whyte



The Group

Dundalk Theatre Workshop was founded in 1977 by Stephen Burns and Matt Murphy and featured regularly in Festivals competing in 1978 and 1980 reaching All-Ireland Finals on both occasions. Subsequently they concentrated on collaborations with local writers and new plays but made a successful return to the Festival Circuit in 1999 with the award winning production of Someone to Watch Over Me by Frank McGuiness. It was runner up in Athlone and went on to win Overall Best Production in Dundalk Maytime International Drama Festival and International Drama Festival in Chicago. In 2005 the group productions of I’m Not Rappaport reached finalist status in Athlone. In 2008 the group’s production of Les Liaisons Dangerous gathered a host of awards on the festival circuit.

Recent productions include Duet for One and Pride and Prejudice (both 2019) and Old Times and The Price (2021). The were the winners of the Abbey Theatre Award and Athlone Finalist with Glengarry Glen Ross in 2016.