Patricia Burke Brogan's Eclipsed is a play with a stinger in its tail. Framed by a present-day prologue and epilogue, the two-act work is set mainly in 1963 in a convent laundry at St. Paul's Home for Penitent Women in Killmacha, Ireland. The Galway-based author is a former nun who worked in an institutional laundry when she was a novice. Eclipsed was inspired by the practice - which started in the time of the Famine, and lasted well into the 1960s and even longer - of making pregnant and unwed Irish mothers work as 'penitents' in church-run laundries. Supervised by nuns who regarded these women as mindless vessels of evil, the women were treated as virtual slaves and their infants were forcibly put up for adoption. First produced by Punchbag Theatre in Galway on February 14th 1992, Eclipsed has since been performed all over Ireland as well as in England, Scotland, America and Italy. The play won a Fringe First at the 1992 Edinburgh Festival, as well as the prestigious Moss Hart Theatre Award in 1994. It was also awarded the Critics' Choice and Best of the Weekend by the Los Angeles Times in 1995 and received four nominations for the Los Angeles Theatre Area Awards and two awards from Dramalogue. Eclipsed was first published by Salmon Publishing in 1994 and reprinted in 1997.

Product Description: This compassionate, courageous play should be brought to a wider audience"" -The Irish Times. ""Brogan has a real ability to paint a landscape with words.... A beautiful writer, who takes on moral issues that need to be addressed""-Irish Theatre Magazine...read more

Product Description: Brogan is a painter, playwright, and printmaker who was born in County Clare. Her paintings and graphics have been exhibited internationally and she has won many awards for her poems, graphics and short stories. Her stage play, Eclipsed has been translated into Italian and French and was performed in Worcester, MA and in Florence in 1994...read more