Once Before I Go
You can paint your placards ‘til the cows come home, but until you have marched through this town in five inch heels and fishnets, you will never know what it is to truly be a faggot on the front line.
Told against the backdrop of Dublin’s burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, Once Before I Go charts the close friendship of Lynn, Daithí, and the luminous Bernard, and sits on the exhilarating edge between comedy, tragedy and melodrama.
Exploring the fragile yet resilient bonds of Irish queer lives across three decades in Dublin, London and Paris, the play steps between the early days of the AIDS crisis and today’s LGBTQ+ community, living in an era of marriage equality, gender self-determination, and untransmittable HIV.
At once political, joyous and heart-breaking, Once Before I Go honours the fabulous people we lost along the way, and celebrates those who fight on.
This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in October 2021.
Phillip McMahon is a playwright and theatre director based in Dublin. His most recent play COME ON HOME, directed by Olivier Award Winner Rachel O'Riordan, played a sold out season at the Abbey Theatre Dublin in 2018. Over ten years, he has produced a number of plays, performances, a book and a film with drag superstar and activist Panti Bliss. Phillip was director, deviser and dramaturg on Panti's live shows IN THESE SHOES?, ALL DOLLED UP, A WOMAN IN PROGRESS, ROOTING FOR AUSTRALIA and HIGH HEELS IN LOW PLACES.
Phillip is an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.