World Premiere Chronically Hopeful
On 22nd November 2025, we premiered Chronically Hopeful at the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg. This has been another wonderful journey of research and development, in collaboration with the cast of truly incredible artists. We look forward to presenting this special work in Ireland in 2026.
Chronically Hopeful is a bold new interdisciplinary production from Musici Ireland that delves into the raw, complicated, and often invisible realities of living with chronic illness, unseen disability, and neurodivergence.
Developed and performed by a team of artists who live these experiences every day, the work blends original music, contemporary dance, poetic monologue, and striking visual design to create a deeply human, unflinching, and often darkly funny portrait of what it means to live inside a “wicked” body in today’s society.
Importantly, this is not a story of cure or redemption. It doesn’t seek to inspire through resolution or to simplify the complex. Instead, it embraces the contradictions of everyday life: the cost of getting out of bed, the absurdity of medical bureaucracy, the sting of being left out, and the unexpected moments of beauty and solidarity that make it possible to carry on. Chronically Hopeful doesn’t tidy things up. It sits in the mess, tells the truth, and holds it all, with humour, grace, empathy, and grit.
CREATIVE TEAM
Chronically Hopeful is a Musici Ireland Production
Created in collaboration with the cast
Director/original concept/costume design: Beth McNinch
Score by: Libby Croad
Poet/Writer: Trudie Gorman
Additional improvisation from Jane Hackett and Siobhan Doyle – Violins, Beth McNinch – Viola, Katie Tertell – Cello
Choreographer/Dancer: Ali Clarke
Dancer: Safire Hikari
Actor: Eleanor Walsh
Lighting Design: Eoin McNinch
Filmed by Willow Hamilton
Developed with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland
Supported by Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Ireland
Supported by Rainy Days Festival, Luxembourg (Premiere Nov 22nd 2025)
Supported by Culture Ireland
