The plays of Gary Mitchell
Gary Mitchell wrote his first play, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, in 1990 but couldn't get it staged. He adapted it for radio, won a BBC competition, and has since written numerous radio plays.
His first stage play, Independent Voice, was performed in Belfast in 1993 and won a Stewart Parker award. He was "gutted" when he couldn't get a Belfast production for his next play, In a Little World of Our Own. However, when it was performed at the Peacock in Dublin in 1997, it won best new play, best director and best supporting actor in the Irish Times Theatre Awards.
His 1998 As the Beast Sleeps was made into a highly acclaimed BBC film (left). Trust followed and then The Force of Change, described by The Irish Times as "frighteningly well worth seeing". His plays are typically violent, riveting and bleakly funny explorations of the loyalist psyche. Relationships, often familial, between Protestants who are Orangemen, policemen, soldiers and paramilitaries are central.
Marching On, staged in 2000, dealt with Drumcree, and Loyal Women was about women in the UDA.
Mitchell is working on two plays for Channel Four and a new play for the Royal Court Theatre in London, called Something to Believe In. He has won the George Devine Award and an Evening Standard award for most promising playwright, and is a former writer-in-residence with the Royal Court.
