Double Bill – ‘Back Home & ‘Grandad & Guinness’ – The Being Well: SoloSIRENs Festival 2026

Double Bill – ‘Back Home & ‘Grandad & Guinness’ – The Being Well: SoloSIRENs Festival 2026

About the event

Double Bill: ‘Back Home’ & ‘Grandad & Guinness’

Two solo performances, ‘Back Home’ by Masha Khaleeva and Daria Holovchanska, and ‘Grandad & Guinness’ by Wandering Stories. Moving through layers of land and history, these stories explore the role of place, memory and family in understanding ourselves and our connections with each other.

Back Home (Work-in-progress showing)

Back Home is a poetic one-woman play-journey exploring the ties between land, memory, and migration. Moving between reality, memory, and folklore, the piece captures the bittersweet nostalgia of leaving home: the ache for land, smells, songs, and landscapes that continue to live in memory. Back Home is a gentle act of resistance, a celebration of cultural memory, and an invitation to remember something you didn’t know you remembered. The play does not offer simple answers. Instead, it asks: what is home made of once it no longer exists as a place? Can memory, land, and story become something we carry, and something we share?

Presenter: Masha Khaleeva & Daria Holovchanska
Credits: Concept, directing & scenography: Daria Holovchanska 
Concept, performing & producing: Masha Khaleeva
Directing adviser: Eftychia Spyridaki
Lightning design: Vlada Hrystenko
Sound: Misha Khalieiev
Marketing visuals: Alime Dzhelilova & Dasha Karpova

Content Warnings: Flashing lights, haze machine, loud sound
Supported by the Backstage Theatre Longford, Scene + Heard and Teatr Wolność

Grandad & Guinness

“Dad, have you seen this!? They said Grandad took it!”
There’s a photograph of Pope John Paul II waving at the crowd, perfectly framed by Guinness’s St. James’s Gate.
“Seen it? Who do you think was holding onto his legs for dear life, as he flung himself out the window to get the shot!”

Grandad wanted to be an artist but left school at 13, got a job taking photos of factory machines and beer barrels instead, worked for Guinness his whole life and never touched a drop. Dad hid his comic book art under the mattress and ended up in computers, and a recovering alcoholic. They both taught Sinéad to draw and dream. Now she tells stories, painting pictures with a thousand words, sharing stories of fairy princesses, fallen heroes, awful successes and joyous losses.

Presented By: Wandering Stories
Credits: Cast- Sinéad O’Brien. Director/Dramaturg- Naoise Ó Duinn

Stories and memories searching for the answer- how do you live ae good life?

Content Warnings: Strong language, discussion of grief, mental health, cancer, addiction & dementia.
Funders/Logos: Supported by the Axis Assemble Programme 2026

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Presented as Part of The Being Well: SoloSIRENs Festival 2026

What do we as individuals, society, and a planet, need to be truly well?
Join us to explore community, connection, resilience and hope in SoloSIRENs third festival at the Civic. Over four weekends from October 29 to December 12, the festival presents performances, works-in-progress, conversations, installations and free workshops exploring festival shows and themes.

A space for artists and audiences to imagine how we can co-create ways of living better together.

SoloSIRENs Festival is funded by the Civic, Tallaght, The Arts Council, South Dublin County Council, Creative Ireland South Dublin, Tallaght Community Arts and Creative Places Mac Uílíam

*Please note this show is in our studio space with unallocated seating. Please arrive early. Latecomers will not not be admitted.

Upcoming dates

This event runs on several dates — pick the one that suits you.

November 2026

  • Wed 25 · 7.30pm
  • Thu 26 · 7.30pm

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