Johanna Gallagher - Issue 34

Johanna Gallagher is a Belfast-based playwright, performer, and former nurse whose work explores contemporary issues through a rich blend of lyrical language, folklore, and realism. After seven years working in healthcare, Johanna transitioned into full-time theatre making - in January 2024, and has since been creatively active and gaining recognition across the Northern Irish theatre scene. Her debut solo show Queen of the Bees had its debut run at The Sanctuary Theatre – East Belfast, in May 2025 and is now being developed into a one-hour festival version.

Johanna’s writing often draws on Irish myth, working-class voices, and the everyday poetry of ordinary lives. Her stage work has featured in scratch and open mics nights across Ulster, and professional showcases including c21 Theatre’s Early Career Playwright Programme 2024. Johanna attended the John Hewitt International Summer School 2025 supported by the Island Arts Centre.

In addition to playwriting, Johanna continues to perform and produce her own work. She believes in the power of stories to transform, include, and provoke.

Johanna is delighted to share her work as part of the Swell Festival and looks forward to celebrating the voices of Northern Irish writers.

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Language of Belonging

MALONE, a young writer from the urban hood of Belfast, with his bag hung over his shoulder stumbles as he recognises Billy, a farmer from Ballymoney in his later years – scribbling pros in his Kellogg’s cornflake note book. It is the middle of the night, in the gardens of a writer's retreat.

ACT 1.

MALONE:

Ah Alright big lad, sorry I didn’t think anyone else’d be up.

BILLY:

Couldn’t sleep. I always find the early hours are good for getting some words down on the page.

MALONE:

Oh aye. Is that you doing your homework for class?

BILLY:

Aye. Trying to. What about yourself?

MALONE:

Nah not for me man. I’m outa here.

BILLY:

You off somewhere? Mon' son, sit down. What’s hassling you?

MALONE:

Naffin. Just going home.

BILLY:

At four in the morning?

MALONE:

Aye, Didn’t want to wake the poets. Figured no one’d notice.

BILLY:

No one notice? What ya’ mean? Your sneakin’ off? Listen son, Its Malone is it? You’re that young fella that sits at the back of the class eating sweets?

MALONE:

Aye well I missed the breakfast mate. This place is nat for me man. This is a pure flook I landed here. I don’t belong here man..

BILLY:

Listen son, come on and sit. Its Billy so it is. Now where ya’ goin son. What do you mean it’s a flook you landed here?

MALONE:

I’m mates with Big Banto. He dragged me here cos I give him some of my lyric’s to read and a short story I made up. Friggin loved it…but course he did. My Da was a word smith ya’know. So is my Ma when she’s roarin’ and shouttin’. So it’s in the blood. But see to be honest mate, this isn’t for me.

BILLY:

Who’s Big Banto?

MALONE:

Banto McGarrity? Anto?

BILLY:

Antony McGarrity? Is your friend? The winner of the Book of the year award and nominated Irish book of the decade for his second book Mad Chat, and short listed for the Man Booker Prize and his latest book Westlink, just won the Windham Campbell Prize - and the Hawthorn Prize.

MALONE:

What do I look like? His Ma? I don’t know what his fff-flippin’ certificates are. He told me there’d be birds here. But they all talk about Beckett and Baldwin and the ethics of post-structural form. I write about kebab shops and learning how to sleep through the electric alarm.

BILLY:

I write about a cow that wouldn’t calf and the ghost of my past.

In Ulster Scots. So I’ve two strikes against me.