"Magdalen" is a layered, one-woman play written and performed by Erin Layton, inspired by the true stories of the women and girls who labored in one of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries in the mid-twentieth century. A narrator invites us into an abandoned building in present-day Dublin, inside what used to operate as a Magdalene Laundry run by the order of the Good Shepherd Sisters. Its ghosts, the young “penitent” washer-women, a parish priest, and the Reverend Mother of the convent, tell their stories in this multi-character performance about this largely unknown and shameful period of a nation’s history.

Erin Layton is a Brooklyn-based, award-winning solo performing artist, producer, and published playwright.