Evenings and Weekends

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A radical, literary soap opera meets contemporary community novel set over the course of one blisteringly hot weekend in London
London, 2019

Its the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than theyve been given

Maggie is thirty, pregnant, and broke. She and her boyfriend, Ed, are moving back to their hometown of Basildon because they can't afford to raise a child in London. Maggie has mixed feelings about abandoning her beloved adopted city, and wonders if having a baby will be the last spontaneous act of her life.

Ed, a bike courier, has been obsessed with death since his father passed away earlier that year. He cant wait to settle down with Maggie, but she doesnt know about his past cruising train station toilets for men to have sex with, or that he has a history with her best friend, Phil.

Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend. He lives in an illegal warehouse commune and is in an intense relationship with his housemate, Keith. Phil has had intimacy issues ever since a traumatic incident years ago, but with Keith he is learning to enjoy love and sex again. Theres only one problem: Keith already has a boyfriend, Louis, and Phil isnt sure if there is room for one more in their relationship.

Meanwhile, Phils mother, Roseleen is travelling to London to tell Phil that she been diagnosed with cancer. Faced with illness, shes wondering whether she will ever feel like the main character in her own story, and cant stop thinking about Pauline, a friend she left behind in another city, long, long ago.

By the end of one sweltering weekend, their relationships to each other and themselves will have transformed beyond recognition, and their previous understandings of the words home and family will be shattered and assembled anew.

But amidst all this turmoil, what has a whale got to do with it all

Author Bio

Oisn Mckenna was born and raised in Drogheda, Ireland and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends - the highest award for an emerging artist in Ireland - and it was developed with further funding from Arts Council England. Evenings and Weekends has been awarded a 2022 London Writers Award, which supports London's most promising underrepresented writers. In 2017, Oisn was named in the Irish Times one of the best-spoken word artists in the country. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and has written for outlets including the Irish Times on issues such as gentrification and the alienation of Dublin's youth.