'People are finally waking up': Noelle Brown on the Abbey Theatre's mother and baby homes project
Cork actor and theatre director Noelle Brown. Picture: Ste Murray
St Patrick’s Day is a time when Irish people at home and abroad loudly and proudly celebrate their identity. This year, while the streets and pubs of our towns and cities are quiet, our national theatre will be alive with the voices of women who were once silenced, for whom Ireland was not a place of comfort, safety or celebration. Home: Part One is the Abbey Theatre’s response to the report on the inquiry into the Mother and Baby institutions, a free streamed event in which a company of 46 women will voice the direct testimonies of survivors.
According to Graham McLaren and Neil Murray, co-directors of the Abbey: “It is their time to speak and our time to listen.” One of those voices will be that of actor and writer Noelle Brown, who was born in the Cork mother and baby home of Bessborough. She is also curator and lead artist on the project. In 2017, her play Postscript, based on her own experience of finding her birth mother, was performed at the Abbey’s Peacock theatre.
