Human Voice
Product details
- ISBN 9781350631946
- Weight: 60g
- Dimensions: 124 x 192mm
- Publication Date: 12 Feb 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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One call can change a life; one call can change your life.
Set in contemporary Belfast, The Human Voice is a bold reimagining of Jean Cocteau’s seminal play, bringing
its emotional intensity into a world that never stops ringing.
As professional responsibility collides with personal heartbreak, she is pushed to her limits, forced to keep listening, keep responding, keep going. In this world, heartache isn’t indulgent or poetic; it’s something you keep in your back pocket as you get on with the job of helping others survive.
A raw, intimate portrait of resilience, connection, and the quiet bravery of showing up when everything inside you is falling apart.
This edition was published to coincide with the production at Lyric Theatre Belfast in February 2026.
Darren Murphy is a Dublin-based playwright, essayist, and academic, originally from Aldershot.
He has been produced in the West End, Off-Broadway, Dublin, Derry, and Edinburgh.
Plays include: X’ntigone for Prime Cut at the MAC, Belfast; Bunny’s Vendetta (commissioned for the inaugural UK City of Culture, Derry, 2013); Irish Blood, English Heart, for Trafalgar Studios, West End; and Tabloid Caligula, at the Arcola in London and as part of the Off-Broadway Festival at E59E, New York.
He was an associate playwright at the Abbey Theatre in 2018 and is currently under commission to the Lime Tree in Limerick.
His essay, The Playwright & the Pugilist, was published in The Tangerine, and his recent article about authenticity and the London-Irish play was published in the Irish Times. He completed a creative practice PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast in 2021, where he was appointed a Ciaran Carson Writing in the City Fellow 2022 – 23, for the Seamus Heaney Centre.
He has taught playwriting at Queen’s University, for the Irish Writers Centre, the Abbey Theatre, the Griffith College for CAPA – the Global Education Network, and is an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at DCU.
