Druid Debuts - Happy Birthday Jacob / Be Infants In Evil

The Druid Debuts series is an initiative started by Druid in 2001 to support the development of talented emerging writers. Happy Birthday Jacob by Michael Marshall & Be Infants in Evil by Brian Martin have both been selected from those which have come through Druid’s open submissions process.

Happy Birthday Jacob

Happy Birthday Jacob sees 17-year-old Jacob Dooley impersonate his parents for his 10-year-old brother, Lucas, after Mum leaves and Dad absents himself for months on end. And no one suspects, least of all the school authorities. Only Jacob’s girlfriend, Terry, is in on the act. They are doing just fine, until Mum returns. Jacob is suspicious, but then Mum gives him the birthday present he’s always wanted.

Michael Marshall is from Ennis and is studying Performing Arts at the Institute of Technology, Sligo.

Be Infants in Evil

Fr. Patrick is newly posted to a parish in Dublin and, this afternoon, finds himself in his new church hearing confessions he is in no mind to hear and, in any case, distrusts for their insincerity. From elderly Noleen who for all her guilelessness, knows more than she lets on to know. From unmarried mother Jacinta, who is anything but repentant for misdemeanours in the eyes of the church. And from Henry, a 12-year-old boy who has somehow made it alone from the other side of the city to be with his old friend.

Brian Martin is a Dublin native now resident in London. He is a graduate from TCD where he studied playwriting with Marina Carr and has been a participant in the Royal Court’s Young Writers’ Programme where Be Infants in Evil was developed.