Lippy - (Oberon Modern Plays) by Bush Moukarzel & Mark O'Halloran & Dead Centre (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In 2000 in Leixlip, co. Kildare, an aunt and 3 sisters boarded themselves into their home and entered into a suicide pact that lasted 40 days. We weren't there. We don't know what they said. This is not their story.

Winner of the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production (2013), and inspired by a real-life event involving the suicide pact of four women in a small town outside Dublin, Lippy is a play about authorship and the role of the writer.

Review Quotes

"In our search for meaning in the world, theatre can deliver truth divinely from the unknown...LIPPY reaches for a terrifying light of heaven. It is the utmost truth and sacrifice you'll see." --Five Stars - Irish Theatre Magazine

"A dense yet simple piece, extraordinarily textured both visually and aurally. It may be easier to admire than It is to love, but Dead Centre make the most of nothing, making absence painfully tangible and forcing us look hard into the glare before the lights fade to black." --Four Stars - Lyn Gardner, Guardian

"Lippy has elements of Beckett, made palatable through the mock-doc first act... It is 'difficult', but never alienating" --Five Stars - Big Issue

"Bush Moukarzel and Mark O'Halloran's Lippy is an extraordinary and challenging piece of theatre that will probably infuriate as many people as it moves. But I loved this Irish production's strange, sinister odyssey to the outskirts of human comprehension." --Four stars - Andrzey Lukowksi, Time Out

"So often theatre, like lip-reading, is about putting words into other people's mouths. Lippy acknowledges and problematises this act of speaking for others, never falling into the trap of seeking easy explanations and ending with as many - if not more - questions as it began with." --Four stars - Catherine Love, What's on Stage

About the Author

Dead Centre make things in theatres. Formed in Dublin in 2012 by Bush Moukarzel, Ben Kidd and Adam Welsh, Dead Centre's first project, Souvenir, was created in Dublin in 2012, and then toured to London and New York. Their second project, (S)quark! happened once in Dublin on Bloomsday, and once in Russia at the Tolstoy Estate. Lippy premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2013 and won Best Production and Best Design at the Fringe Awards, and Best Production at the Irish Times Theatre Awards.

Bush Moukarzel has written 3 plays for Dead Centre. As well as being a writer he works as an actor, touring extensively with Irish company Pan Pan. He is currently working on a new project for Dead Centre, Chekhov's First Play.

Mark O'Halloran is one of Ireland's leading actors and writers. His screenplays include Adam & Paul and Garage. He has also written a television series, Prosperity. Plays include The Head of Red O'Brien and Mary Motorhead. Trade, which premiered at the 2011 Dublin International Theatre Festival, won the Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for Best Play of 2011 as well as the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild Zebbie award for best new play. Mark has been nominated for numerous other awards, including a European Film Award for the screenplay of Adam & Paul, Irish Film and Television Awards where he won for both 'best screenplay' and 'best TV writer' 2007. He also won the London Evening Standard award for Best Screenplay in 2005.