DOROTHY OF NOWHERE
Winner of Origin Theatre WB Yeats Emerging Playwright Award
Set in a small fictional Irish town called Nowhere, the play tells the story of a teenage girl who sees her worldview shift radically as she discovers love, poetry and stark tragedy all at once.
Press Clippings
September 28, 2016 - Ruffian Productions and Double Decker Productions Present DOROTHY OF NOWHERE - Broadway World
September sees the return of Origin Theatre's extraordinary 1st Irish Festival, a movable theatrical feast ranked by many as one of the city's premiere theatre festivals. This year once again features 1st Irish's staple Next Generation series which includes the much anticipated Dorothy of Nowhere, written by newcomer Thomas Burns Scully.
Dorothy of Nowhere is the winner of last year's Origin Theatre WB Yeats Emerging Playwright Award, co-sponsored by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and The Consulate General of Ireland in New York. Set in a small fictional Irish town called Nowhere, the play tells the story of a teenage girl who sees her worldview shift radically as she discovers love, poetry and stark tragedy all at once.
George Heslin (Artistic Director of Origin) and Jessica Traynor (Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre) say "This is a play that feels contemporary and immediate, while paying fitting tribute to Yeats' legacy."
This production sees the directorial return of perennial Origin Theatre favorite Christopher Randolph. Randolph directed last year's highly-successful Off-Broadway run of The International and, aside from his extensive director's resume, is known the world over as the voice of Otacon in blockbuster video-game franchise Metal Gear Solid.
May 10, 2016 - Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival: An Overview - Plays To See - by Austin Fimmano
Another great feature of the 1st Irish Theatre Festival is the Next Generation series, meant to showcase new plays in workshop productions. One of the featured plays this year is Dorothy of Nowhere by Thomas Burns Scully. Born last year out of Origin’s W.B. Yeats Emerging Playwright Competition, Dorothy of Nowhere is at once intense, tragic, and terribly funny. It centers on a teenage girl, Dorothy, living in a small town in Ireland who is at once discovering herself as both a talented poet and as a sensual being. Through her relationships with her mother, her boyfriend, and an eccentric new friend, Dorothy explores herself and the world around her. Burns Scully said he was intrigued by a recurring theme of heritage in Yeats’s poems. “I was particularly drawn to his later work; he wrote these poems about love and sex from a female point of view called The Lady’s Songs…so gradually this story about three generations of women, poetry, and sex started to evolve.” Moreover, Burns Scully explained that he tried to keep the play “grounded in [the] characters’ wants and pains, longings and senses of humor.” The result is a very real, incredibly touching story.
In many ways, Dorothy of Nowhere represents what makes the 1st Irish Theatre Festival so special. Written, acted, and directed by a talented cast from Ireland, the UK, and the States, the show combines the hallmarks of Irish culture with the narrative of modern Ireland: an homage to W.B. Yeats, and a compelling struggle to define oneself, whether through poetry, love, family, or friends. “It’s really something special,” said Burns Scully. “The goodwill it’s engendered… it feels like it’s grown very quickly into something that’s bigger than me. If we could get an audience to leave crying and laughing, that would be special. There should be a lot of both, if we do our jobs right.”