carnival

Written By: Lucy Caldwell
Directed By: Paula McFetridge
Production Premiere: 24th November 2008

Carnival - circus life, family loyalty and poverty in a magical Spiegeltent.

Two sisters, taken in by a Romany carnival troupe during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, find themselves at the end of the road in Belfast in 2008 and at the centre of a sick barter between two rival sides of a family. The carnival troupe is disintegrating, in more ways than one, from poverty, discrimination and dying customs. They soon find out that pride is not a sellable commodity.

But leaving the life – even a poor life – that you’re only ever known is never easy.

Premiered at the Belfast Festival in a Spiegeltent with live gypsy music, acrobatics and aerial dance.

The dark side of circus life, family loyalty and poverty is revealed in Carnival, the riveting new play from Belfast prize-winning author and playwright Lucy Caldwell…The play is inspired by the incredibly strange but true story of an Italian ‘circus of horrors’ in which teenage girls were alleged to have lived in “inhuman” conditions and forced into dangerous acts with animals, including deadly snakes and flesh-eating piranhas.

Grania McFadden - Belfast Times
interesting piece-entertaining and thoughtful and everything came together beautifully....The Spiegeltent was magic.

Audience Feedback
a leap in the dark and a real boundary-pusher for the audience

Audience Feedback