Yes So I Said Yes

It’s harder to kill people when there’s a peace process on.

Ulster Loyalist Alan Black is kept awake every night by his neighbour McCorrick’s dog barking. To add to his difficulties, McCorrick refuses to acknowledge that he even owns a dog, let alone one that is creating a disturbance.

In a Northern Ireland he barely recognises, where politics has proved just to be the continuation of war by other means, a disconsolate Alan sets out to rid himself of the incessant noise. As he seeks help from authority figures, he finally - as a very last resort - turns to the only voice he can really trust, Eamonn Holmes...

Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the partition of Ireland and the foundation of Northern Ireland, Yes So I Said Yes is a blackly comic, ferocious, dystopian satire about what it’s like to feel alone in a place where everyone else is conspiring to erase you and your history.

This edition was published to coincide with the production at London’s Finborough Theatre in November 2021.

David Ireland was Playwright-in-Residence at the Lyric Theatre Belfast 2011-2012. He won the Stewart Parker Award and the Meyer-Whitworth Award in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright 2016. He won the James Tait Black Prize Award for Cyprus Avenue.