Drip Feed & The Half Of It (NHB Modern Plays)

Two rich and startling monologues from award-winning actor and playwright Karen Cogan. Cork, 1998. An obsessive odyssey through the city. Dancing on tables, 3 a.m. breakfast rolls and waking up, polluted, on the wrong person's doorstep. Brenda and her ferocious best pal are part of the city furniture. But one of them is realising that she's got it all, all of it, horribly wrong and it might be too late. Drip Feed is an infectious, dark comedy about the messiness of being young(ish), female and queer. The play was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award 2017, and premiered at Assembly George Square as part of the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in a co-production between Fishamble and Soho Theatre, London. Also included in this volume is Karen Cogan's first play The Half Of It, a relentless, darkly lyrical work about a life, lived unseen, which won the Stewart Parker Award in 2018 after a sold-out run at the Dublin Fringe Festival, produced by Mommo Theatre. In a London flat, a Cork woman is climbing the walls. She lives alone, eating dry digestives and hiding from the postman. She hasn't stepped outside in six years. Does she definitely still exist?

Karen trained as an actor at RADA. Her first play The Half Of It won the Stewart Parker Award in 2018 after a sold out run in Dublin. The Half Of It was nominated for five Fringe Awards and won the First Fortnight Award. Karen's second play Drip Feed was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award. It reached the top six of 1,200 submissions. Drip Feed had its world premiere with the Soho Theatre in Edinburgh and London, and was optioned and commissioned for television development by Witchery Pictures. Karen was one of the chosen playwrights for Fishamble's A Play For Ireland initiative 2018/19.