Off the Cuff Community Theatre Group return to the Helican at Seamus Heaney Homeplace with a Sam Burnside play

Sam Burnside who passed away earlier this year was the author of several books. He was founder and director of the Verbal Arts Centre Derry in 1992 as an educational charity to promote literature in all its forms.

Featuring Sam Burnside’s poetic language, The Long Now is an evocative exploration of one man’s memories of growing up in an Ulster farming community.

Speaking of the play, Burnside said: “Memory is general to all, while memories are unique to each of us. Memory is shared, but my memories are mine, warmed or cooled, sweetened or embittered with time’s passing.

“I remember as a child being a passenger in a big black car on one dark evening. I remember sitting low in the front passenger seat, looking up and out through the windscreen, the passing world of tree tops and cloud-filled sky being cut like scenes in a film with that mesmeric rhythm of the windscreen wipers. Do I remember, or do I imagine the sound of the wipers, the warmth of the car and the smell of the smoke of my mother’s cigarette? I do not know but I imagine I remember the truth of that experience.

“This entertainment may or may not be true. Who can say? Co Antrim in the 1950s is a far-off place. Yet, this is the honest product of a writer closing his eyes and thrusting his hand into the bran tub of time and memory and hoping.”