Waiting (2000)

Written and directed by Dave Duggan
Produced by Sole Purpose Productions

Performed by

Patricia Byrne and Jonathan Burgess

Production team

Jan Vaclav Caspers, Adrian McKinney

Waiting…. looks at the issue of political ex-prisoners and victims and the theme of moving on. Two people meet at a derelict bus stop. Both waiting. Their separate lives are stalled by the single incident that now joins them. What can they say to each other? In the drama of their meeting, we learn something of the pasts they are trying to remember, and of the futures they are trying to build.

Waiting… dramatises this meeting in a 40-minute play that is searing, absurd and ultimately healing. The two protagonists, played by Jonathan Burgess and Patricia Byrne, struggle to communicate by means of the word and board games they play, the songs they sing, the memories they evoke and the dreams and hopes they nurture between them.

Waiting is one of the most powerful pieces of conflict resolution work I have been involved in.

Maureen Hetherington, Community Relations Officer