Two raw and revealing plays about family, Ireland, secrecy and shame, by the award-winning playwright Carys D. Coburn. Set in 1980s Ireland, BÁN is a reworking of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba. Five sisters, bound together under their mother's watchful eye, spend their lives longing for escape, power and the one local eligible bachelor. Dark, raucous and with a tender heart, BÁN was nominated for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 2025. In Absent The Wrong, a woman looking for her child is lied to; an artist pitches a memorial that is never built; a landlord raises rents; and thousands of children disappear. An intimate and sweeping play about seventy years of adoptees and their search for answers, it premiered at the Abbey Theatre as part of the 2022 Dublin Theatre Festival, where it was named Best New Production.

Carys D. Coburn (they/them) is a writer and theatre maker based in Dublin. Their plays include: BÁN (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2025, nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Absent The Wrong (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2022, as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival); Boys and Girls (Dublin Fringe Festival 2013, winner of Best New Writing Award, nominated for the Stewart Parker Trust Award); Drawing Crosses on a Dusty Windowpane (Dublin Fringe 2015); Citysong (winner of the Verity Bargate Award; Abbey Theatre Dublin and Soho Theatre London 2019); Briseis after the Black and Blackcatfishmusketeer (Dublin Fringe 2016); and This is a Room (Dublin Theatre Festival 2017). They are a collaborating writer with MALAPROP Theatre, with whom they have co-written JERICHO (Bewleys Cafe Theatre, 2017), Everything Not Saved (Dublin Fringe, 2017), Before You Say Anything (Dublin Fringe, 2020), Where Sat the Lovers (Dublin Fringe, 2021) and HOTHOUSE (Dublin Fringe, 2023). Carys D. Coburn was formerly known as Dylan Coburn Gray. Author photo by Evanna Devine