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Terror drama staged in back of a Belfast taxi

Until now no taxi driver in the history of road transport could ever brag to paying customers about once having a theatre in the back of his cab.

But a play that literally traces the route of Belfast's so-called "terror tours" can fulfil that boast. Two Roads West is set in a most unusual theatrical setting - the inside of a Belfast black taxi cab. For just over an hour an audience of up to five people travel around in a theatre-on-wheels as the taxi criss-crosses the Falls and Shankill Roads and tells the story of one woman's journey home after 40 years in exile outside Northern Ireland.

During the journey the audience sit cramped beside "Rosie", a grandmother-to-be who left the city before it was torn apart by the Troubles, and how on her own "terror tour" she is given a second chance to see the lover she left behind back in the 1960s.

The mobile play is the work of former IRA hunger-striker-turned-writer Laurence McKeown and begins a 10-day run during the West Belfast Festival, FĂ©ile '09, this weekend. McKeown and his director Paula McFetridge hope it can become a permanent drama fixture on the tourist trail around the old conflict zones of north and west Belfast...

Read entire article at Observer