No Woman's Land

Ciara O'Neill

Edge Hill University, with support from the British Association for Irish Studies

The Arts Centre, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk

October 29 and 30 (7pm), 2025; 60 mins

Ciara O'Neill in No Woman's Land

Ciara O'Neill knows what it is like to be a woman in Belfast, having grown up in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday agreement, but with the stories all around her, and a feeling of unease that lingered long after the bullets stopped flying.

No Woman's Land is based on O'Neill's extensive research with women in Belfast, from both sides of the sectarian divide, and those who came in from elsewhere (namely Yorkshire and Spain) to an experience of military presence, paramilitary pressures and an urgent need for advancement in women's rights that was pushed to the back of the political agenda. Women would have to wait...

But as O'Neill demonstrates in this well-crafted and ably-acted piece, so many women were fed up of being told what to do, by men, by church, state and other forces, and tired of being told no. And though their voices were marginalised, activism for women's rights grew on every side.

Through this one-woman performance we hear the voices of seven women (collected verbatim from interviews) and the echoes of many more.

There are some powerful moments indeed. O'Neill describes the unease, many years later, of entering an area where "I wasn't supposed to be", the slow realisation that living an everyday life through The Troubles, the assumed normality just actually wasn't normal; it was survived, but it just wasn't normal.

As one of her characters puts it, the realisation crept in that "we were living in a constant state of shitness". We hear about the need to carry on, from a women holding "grief in one hand and the washing in the other"; and from another character, acknowledging that besides talking about the wrongs done to us, there is a need to talk about the wrongs done to each other. 

The show begins with the unpacking of a suitcase, and a stunning rendition of Barnback's folk song  Belfast, sung a capella in O'Neill's powerful folk style, which seems to hold far more nuanced meaning even than the original. She packs up the suitcase and brings the song back to end the show too, and through her voice we hear the affection of generations of all these women for their home town. Running through the politics, the violence, trauma and the fear, there is a real and audible sense of love.

O'Neill draws on the courage and complexity that defines seven Belfast women's relationships with their city, and presents it with pathos, humour and a resonant, resilient and authentic voice.

This is political theatre told from a different perspective, sharing how women found the space for their activism when the world wanted to hear a different story.

More info and tickets (free, but must be booked) here