My Name Is Mary Ann McCracken
Drinks reception: 7:15pm
Curtain up: 8pm sharp
Set in the ferment of revolutionary Belfast, My Name Is Mary Ann McCracken brings to life the extraordinary story of one of Ireland’s most overlooked heroines.
Mary Ann McCracken was more than the sister of the doomed United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken; she was a fearless advocate for the poor, a lifelong abolitionist and a woman who refused to stand idle while injustice thrived around her.
The play charts her journey from the drawing rooms of Belfast’s radical elite to the grim aftermath of the 1798 rebellion, as Mary Ann risks ruin and scandal to defend her brother’s ideals. While the noose claims her brother’s life, Mary Ann’s own fight is only beginning.
As industrial Belfast grows, she devotes her long life to championing education for the working classes, campaigning against child labour, and standing at the docks, even into her eighties, to protest slave ships and urge merchants to abandon the trade in human lives.
My Name Is Mary Ann McCracken is a stirring tribute to a woman whose quiet, relentless activism shaped her city and whose name deserves to echo through history, reminding us that courage is not always found on the battlefield, but often in the quiet, unwavering conviction to do what is right.
