Description

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       Shush is a comedy by the Irish playwright Elaine Murphy. It tells the story of a group of friends who get together to celebrate the birthday of one of them, Breda, who is going through a divorce. The celebration-turned-group-therapy offers a funny and insightful look into the power of female friendship.

Elaine Murphy is a fresh face on the Irish playwriting scene whose work has won widespread acclaim. Her debut play, Little Gem, premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2008, playing to packed audiences during its sellout run. It picked up the Fishamble New Writing Award and a nomination for Best New Play at the Irish Times Theatre Awards before transferring to Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, where it won the 2009 Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award.

       Murphy’s second play, Ribbons, was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre for The Fairer Sex, a series of short plays from leading female playwrights, followed by Shush, also an Abbey Theatre commission, which premiered on the mainstage in 2013 for a six-week run. She is currently developing a new TV drama series Fleecers, and her adaptation of Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends opened to great reviews at The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 2022.

Shush portrays a group of women that anyone can relate to. They are in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, offering a variety of perspectives on how to deal with everyday emotions and how to navigate through the challenges that marriage, age, and relationships bring to their lives.

      Shush will be performed in Theatre Tallahassee Studio Theater, and tickets are available here on the IRT website. Most of the play takes place in the living room/kitchen of Breda’s apartment, where the characters move about while chatting and drinking, which makes the space of The Studio perfect for the kind of intimacy that surrounds the characters.

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The Director

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       For Alejandra Gutierrez as director, the possibility of doing a play that is centered on the characters and their journey is very exciting. All the women have distinct personalities, and through the course of the night, they will touch on a great variety of topics, including love, marriage, infidelity, children, loneliness, and death.

       Gutierrez teaches at Florida State University. She has a PhD in Contemporary Hispanic Literature. While living in Venezuela, her country of origin, she studied theater with some of the most important companies in Caracas and founded a small theater group there. Her work in theater includes acting, producing, and directing. Gutierrez has acted with different groups in Caracas, Virginia, and Tallahassee, where she has worked with Theater with a Mission, The Irish Theater Repertory, Monticello Opera House, and Tallahassee Hispanic Theater. Among her many directorial credits is a critically acclaimed IRT production of “The Birds” with Nathan Williamson and Erika Stone. In 2006 she founded Tallahassee Hispanic Theater, with the mission of presenting contemporary Hispanic theater productions for the cultural education and enrichment of the community while building cross-cultural awareness. As Artistic Director here, she is involved in all the areas of the productions, including translating the plays into English, producing, directing, and acting.