University Events

Description: Patricia Burke Brogan's stunning glimpse into horrid reality is more than just another Irish play; it's a cunningly sharp attack on some of the dictates of the Catholic Church. The location is an institutional laundry in the fictional town of Killamacha, sometime in the 1960s. Slaving in the laundry are the penitents, women who have sinned by having sex outside of marriage, bearing illegitimate children, or being raped. Given up by their families, their seducers, and society, their children adopted or sent to orphanages, they are indentured to the church, according to the rigidly brutal Mother Victoria, their chief warder, to protect them from their passion. The harsh system existed in Ireland for 150 years before it was finally outlawed in 1970; during that period, the women were essentially eclipsed from history. A bus will take people to the play in Providence at The Barker Playhouse. Register by emailing mberube@umassd.edu