Gina Donnelly’s award-winning play is back by popular demand for an NI tour before heading off to London and Edinburgh
GINA Donnelly has been writing and producing since graduating from Queen's University Belfast in 2017. From Whitehead in County Antrim, the 28-year-old's previous work has toured as far as Australia and New York.
With her star very-much on the rise, Brassneck Theatre Company commissioned Gina to write a new play and ‘Anthem For Dissatisfaction’ was born. The show premiered in Féile and Phobail last August, then travelled to the Dublin Fringe Festival, where it won the Solas Nua Award 2024. The play has since been invited to the Irish Cultural Centre in London, and will be going to the Edinburgh Festival 2025.
Next month the play is back onstage in Belfast playing at the MAC Theatre and Black Mountain Shared Space.
With drastic funding cuts to the arts, cultural activities are becoming less accessible for low-income people and families and this is exactly why Gina had written this dynamic tour de force.
“I am a working-class artist," she says. "I grew up on benefits and because I went to grammar school and wanted to work in the arts, I spent a long time feeling ashamed; struggling with the feeling that arts were dominated by the people who needed their power the least and guilty about the fact that I was passing for one of those people.
"People openly 'othered' working class people in rooms I was in and spoke of those on benefits as though they were fictional characters or tabloid fodder, and not peers. It was only when I began to see and interact with other working-class artists and found the power of their work that I began to openly and proudly talk about it. Growing up on benefits made me angry and passionate and intelligent and politicised long before those emotions might otherwise have found me. In simpler terms, growing up on benefits made me an artist. ‘Anthem’ is a celebration of the power of art in working class lives."
ANTHEM FOR DISSATISFACTION: Simon Sweeney and Gwen Connolly
Gina is currently working in her first TV commission with long-term collaborator Seón Simpson, and her newest piece of writing ‘Love Is Mortifying’ – a fairytale for the Tinder generation – can be heard later this year on BBC Radio 4 and Sounds as part of BBC Shortworks.
Her work with SkelpieLimmer has earned her multiple awards including Abbey Theatre and Dublin Fringe Creative Thinking Award 2019, Lustrum Award Edinburgh 2019, both for ‘Two Fingers Up’, and Edinburgh National Partnerships Pleasance Award 2023 for ‘Scaredy Fat’. SkelpieLimmer are currently developing a factual entertainment podcast inspired by ‘Two Fingers Up'.
Gilly Campbell, Director of Arts Development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, said: “Anthem for Dissatisfaction reminds us all of the power of music in providing the soundtrack to our lives, and of how music and the arts continue to play an important role in bringing our people and communities closer together. I would encourage everyone to go along and see this play in Brassneck’s long line of critically acclaimed, socially engaged theatre that is proving exceptionally popular with audiences.”
Anthem For Dissatisfaction is playing at the following dates and venues:
June 5th-7th The MAC Belfast
June 11th The Playhouse Derry
June 12th Marketplace Armagh
June 13th St Enda’s Glengormley
June 14th Down Arts Centre
June 15th Black Mountain Shared Space
