This screening will be introduced by Peter Sheridan.

First written for the Project Arts Centre in 1976, where it was directed by Peter Sheridan, Mobile Homes concerns the plight of a young artist, Shay, who moves into a caravan site in Dublin. Soon he is embroiled in conflict with the authorities in the shape of the park owner and then his own father-in-law, who taunts him for his socialist attitudes. The play was adapted by Peter Sheridan and directed by Pat O’Connor for RTE in 1979 and Jim Sheridan himself took the lead role. As Helena Sheehan wrote in Irish TV Drama: ‘This play provided one of the very few occasions on which any character, let alone a central character, was a committed socialist. Sheridan, primarily through his own character of Shay […], showed rather simply how Engels’ writings on housing had helped some at least to see their unhappy lot and their small-scale endeavours as part of a larger process, moving hopefully towards a larger solution.’