Entertainment / October 14, 2021

Emmet Kirwan announces new play ‘Straight To Video’

Emmet Kirwan by George Voronov for District Magazine
Entertainment / October 14, 2021

Emmet Kirwan announces new play ‘Straight To Video’

Words: Dylan Murphy

The world premiere will be available at The Projects Arts Centre next month.

Mark your calendars, Dublin actor and playwright Emmet Kirwan has a new play landing next month. The lead from 2018’s Dublin Old School revealed today on social media that his new play Straight To Video will be available to see at The Projects Arts Centre November 9 – December 11.

Produced by Landmark Ireland, the comedy is “set in the mid 90s, a turbulent period in Tallaght’s social history, against the backdrop of the Drugs Out marches” and is directed by Phillip McMahon and presented in association with Civic Theatre Tallaght and Projects Arts Centre.

A press release for the play reads, “In a video shop in west Tallaght, in the tumultuous spring of 1995, the owner Barry is having problems with his staff, the customers, a local vigilante called The Coach, and an elusive video pirate simply called The Video Van Man, who’s ripping off his stock. His long-suffering staff Karl and Claire are the movie geek brains that keep the shop going, but they and the shop are under threat from a multitude of outside forces – local vigilantes, lack of opportunity, their chaotic family lives, not to mention VHS going rapidly out of fashion. The shop cannot survive, but if our gang is going out they’ll go out together, with integrity … because all anyone in this play wants is to watch a film together, in peace.”

Emmet also starred in RTÉ2’s Sarah & Steve and back in 2012 he performed Just Saying, which was written and directed by Dave Tynan.

Performances run from November 9 – December 11. Tickets start at 20 euro and can be bought here.

Elsewhere on District: Rent to bye: Three Dubliners in the midst of the Housing Crisis.