Productions

Rough Weekend is a showcase of new writing and big ideas. This event will feature stagings, readings and discussions, offering glimpses and impressions of 14 new never-before-seen works, commissioned by Rough Magic as part of the COMPASS Programme.

This joyous play tells the story of Handel’s Messiah, the world’s most popular choral work, from its fraught birth to its glorious outcome; a tale about the complicated, comedic business of putting on a show and the transformative power of music. Irish Premiere 2021.

A tense psychological thriller starring Robbie O’Connor and John Cronin and directed by Ronan Phelan. Premiering in Dublin Theatre Festival 2021.

Tonic is a wild, trad-infused musical medicine-show that invites the audience to decide their own fate through a blistering performance from the notorious Calibri Triplet Family Band. A bitingly satirical new play that promises spirit and spectacle in equal measure. Written by Fionn Foley, premiering in 2021.

Winner of the Impac Dublin Literary Award 2018, Solar Bones is Mike McCormack’s multi-award-winning elegy to the merits of an ordinary life, spoken from an intermediate state between memory and nothingness. Kilkenny Arts Festival in partnership with Rough Magic, in association with Watergate Theatre presents this World Premiere production.

Rough Magic SEEDS Showcase: Venus In Fur by David Ives, a dive into the darkly comedic world of sadomasochism by one of America’s sharpest and funniest writers.

February 2020.

Rough Magic presents the Irish premiere of a major work by Marina Carr, in the Dublin Theatre Festival 2019.

On the deck of a deluxe mobile home a group of friends gather for a week long party full of cocktail-infused debauchery, bad dancing and questionable gender politics.

A co-production with Kilkenny Arts Festival

World Premiere

Twin sisters Fea and Caireen, living on a harsh, remote island, are raising Fea’s son together. Abandoned by their mother at a young age and left in their teens to fend for themselves by their troubled father, the women have created their own emotional ecosystem.

Rough Magic presents the world premiere of James Joyce’s seminal novel in Arthur Riordan’s vibrant new stage adaptation.