19-year-old French student Kaiser "Kai" Kateb has too many secrets to keep. And to his deeply religious parents, the fact that he's gay isn't even the worst of it-He's the only one that knows what happened to his sister the night she disappeared six years ago. So when Kai travels to Ireland for university, his goal is to leave all those secrets behind. Caleb Burke has had a change of heart. Literally. But that doesn't stop him from wanting to escape the overbearing care of his attentive mother. With a need to push the boundaries of life, he has his eyes set firmly on the skies. One is afraid of living. The other has stared death in the face. And as Kai's secrets come to light, they'll need each other more than ever. But can they overcome their fears together? Or is the truth too difficult to bear?

When nineteen-year-old Denis Murphy sneaks onto an exclusive overnight train from Dublin to Belfast, he wasn't counting on being caught. Or falling in love. But he has some trust issues to overcome first. Oliver Lloyd is famous just for being rich, but he doesn't let it affect him the way it does his sister. When he is asked to cut the ribbon at the launch of Ireland's first extravagant overnight train service, he jumps at the chance to get away from his money-grabbing friends and his narcissistic ex-boyfriend and clear his head. But when Denis and Oliver are thrust together onboard a luxury steam train, the screeching brakes won't be the only thing making sparks fly. If only they could get past their differences.

HEROIN by Grace Dyas, Trade by Mark O'Halloran, The Art of Swimming by Lynda Radley, Pineapple by Phillip McMahon, I ? Alice ? I by Amy Conroy, The Big Deal edited by Una McKevitt, Oedipus Loves You by Simon Doyle & Gavin Quinn, The Year of Magical Wanking by Neil Watkins Edited and introduced by Thomas Conway This anthology comprises eight new plays by Irish playwrights premiered between the years 2006 and 2011. These playwrights ride, however, in no slipstream of the identifiably Irish play. Here, the enterprise of playwriting itself is being re-imagined. Here, above all else, is a commitment to becoming in the theatre. For all that, each play is concerned with what is unfinished business in Ireland. How astonishing, then, that these plays should revolve for the most part around identity and, in particular, sexual identity. How identity comes into play, how we open up the field of play, how we raise into collective experience the exercise of that play - the urgency in the playwriting would appear to lie precisely here. We can read from the historical moment - from a narrative emphasizing an economic bubble and its hangover - into these plays. Or we can take these playwrights at their word and observe lives lived at the contour of identities in the making. It is for us as readers, just as we have as theatre-goers - frequently scandalized, enthralled, shamed, appalled, unburdened, tickled pink - to decide.

19-year-old French student Kaiser "Kai" Kateb has too many secrets to keep. And to his deeply religious parents, the fact that he's gay isn't even the worst of it-He's the only one that knows what happened to his sister the night she disappeared six years ago. So when Kai travels to Ireland for university, his goal is to leave all those secrets behind. Caleb Burke has had a change of heart. Literally. But that doesn't stop him from wanting to escape the overbearing care of his attentive mother. With a need to push the boundaries of life, he has his eyes set firmly on the skies. One is afraid of living. The other has stared death in the face. And as Kai's secrets come to light, they'll need each other more than ever. But can they overcome their fears together? Or is the truth too difficult to bear?

When nineteen-year-old Denis Murphy sneaks onto an exclusive overnight train from Dublin to Belfast, he wasn't counting on being caught. Or falling in love. But he has some trust issues to overcome first. Oliver Lloyd is famous just for being rich, but he doesn't let it affect him the way it does his sister. When he is asked to cut the ribbon at the launch of Ireland's first extravagant overnight train service, he jumps at the chance to get away from his money-grabbing friends and his narcissistic ex-boyfriend and clear his head. But when Denis and Oliver are thrust together onboard a luxury steam train, the screeching brakes won't be the only thing making sparks fly. If only they could get past their differences.