Award-winning solo performance ‘Magdalen’ launches ARTSwego series
The ARTSwego Performing Arts Series will begin its 2026-27 season with “Magdalen,” a layered one-woman play written and performed by Erin Layton at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17, in Tyler Hall’s Waterman Theatre.
Inspired by the true stories of the women and girls who labored in one of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries in the mid-twentieth century, “Magdalen” invites audiences into an abandoned building in present-day Dublin, inside what used to operate as a Magdalene Laundry run by the order of the Good Shepherd Sisters.
Its ghosts, the young “penitent” washer-women, a parish priest and the Reverend Mother tell their stories in this multi-character performance about what is considered a largely unknown and shameful period of Ireland’s history.
Magdalene Laundries were institutions in Ireland where women and girls were confined and forced to carry out unpaid labor. At least 10,000 women and girls were imprisoned in Magdalene Laundries before the last one closed in 1996.
The institutions were operated by four religious orders, including the Good Shepherd Sisters, and were funded in part by the Irish government. Several recent books, television shows, and movies explore the Magdalene Laundries and their effect, including the 2013 film “Philomena,” both the 2021 book and 2023 film “Small Things Like These” and the 2023 BBC series “The Woman in the Wall.”
While on campus, Layton will host a workshop for acting students in one of Steven Mazzoccone's theatre classes and will work with students in Mary McCune’s “Sexuality in the U.S. and Ireland History” course.
Co-developed and directed by Julie Kline, “Magdalen” has toured the festival circuit in cities across the United States, including Off-Broadway: SoHo Playhouse, 59E59 Theaters; internationally as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; and through invited performances for Irish community centers and venues across the New York tri-state area including at The Kumble Theater, New York City Irish Center, the American Irish Association of Westchester, Lehman College and Hofstra University.
Layton is a Brooklyn-based, award-winning solo performing artist, producer and playwright. Her additional credits a two-person adaptation of "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” (Off-Broadway Alliance Nominee), “Let Us Go Then, You and I” (Undergroundzero Theatre Festival), “Weird Sisters” (East Third Ensemble), “Pitch” (East Coast Artists, LaMaMa) and “Pearl Merchant” (Threads Theatre Company), among others.
Admission to this show is free for SUNY Oswego students; $18 for staff, faculty and alumni; $23 for the general public; and $6 for non-Oswego students; these prices include all related fees. Tickets are available at the Marano Campus Center box office or online at tickets.oswego.edu.
For more information, visit oswego.edu/artswego.
– Submitted by ARTSwego