Jane Coyle

Readings by Ruairi Conaghan & Caitriona Hinds

For over 40 years, the Welsh-born arts journalist and critic Jane Coyle has travelled the length and breadth of Northern Ireland to record the activities of its theatre industry. The result is A Better Locksmith, a landmark anthology of selected reviews, interviews, features and news stories for publications such as The Irish Times, The Stage, The Irish News, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Tribune, Irish Theatre Magazine, Culture Northern Ireland and Theatre Ireland, from 1984 through to 2025.

En route, it charts the evolution and development of the high quality, internationally acclaimed work of an astonishingly creative and resilient community of theatre makers, who, over those years, braved multiple challenges from civi unrest, social and political upheaval and financial pressures.

One-off productions, site specific performances, international partnerships and individual career paths are reported with clarity, insight, affection and humanity, all from the viewpoint of a self-confessed ‘objective outsider’.

Theatre director and former Queen’s University Belfast drama lecturer David Grant, who wrote the foreword, shares with Coyle her recollections, experiences and memories from the past four decades. Actors Ruairi Conaghan and Caitriona Hinds will read scenes from some of the plays featured in the book, including Northern Star, Agreement, Lay Up Your Ends and Philadelphia, Here I Come!