All Aboard the wee Donegal
In August 2026, Know Promises Theatre Collective was delighted to collaborate with Dark Daughter Productions and playwright/director Maura Logue on All Aboard the Wee Donegal, a site-specific drama created for the Donegal Railway Heritage Museum as part of National Heritage Week.
The project brought together theatre, local history and the physical heritage of the old Donegal railway station, transforming the museum’s historic buildings, railway carriages, vans and steam engine into the world of the play. Set on a June morning in 1944, during the Emergency, the production followed a colourful collection of characters as they prepared to board the train from Donegal Station towards Stranorlar and Barnesmore Gap.
For Know Promises, the collaboration offered an exciting opportunity to bring our physical and ensemble-led approach to a very different kind of theatrical environment. Rather than placing a play inside a conventional theatre, the railway itself became the stage. Audiences moved through the museum, encountered performers within the historic station environment and experienced the story alongside the objects and spaces that inspired it.
Participants
Brian Devaney
Station Master
Dylan McGloin
Porter
Ellen Gilmartin
Marian
The Performance
The production was presented as three rolling performances on Sunday 16 August 2026, at 2 pm, 3 pm and 4 pm, as part of National Heritage Week. It was free and family-friendly, allowing a broad local audience to encounter the museum through a new theatrical lens.
The performance explored the everyday concerns of 1944 Donegal alongside the comic mishaps of railway life — from fuel shortages and the pressures of wartime Ireland to social expectations, work, travel and even the complications caused by cows calving at precisely the wrong moment.
The physicality of the production was central to the experience. Moving through the station and encountering different characters and moments across the site created an atmosphere closer to stepping inside a living memory than watching a traditional stage play.
With thanks to Dark Daughter Productions, Maura Logue, Donegal Railway Heritage Museum, Donegal County Council, Creative Ireland and National Heritage Week for the opportunity to be part of this project.
Connecting Heritage and Contemporary Theatre
For Know Promises, this collaboration demonstrated how contemporary performance can help audiences reconnect with local heritage without treating history as something static or distant.
The railway was once a fundamental part of everyday life in Donegal. By placing performers directly among the surviving carriages, buildings and machinery, All Aboard the Wee Donegal allowed audiences to imagine the station not as a museum piece, but as a place full of movement, conversation, work, humour and possibility.
The Donegal Railway Heritage Museum’s collaboration with Dark Daughter Productions was supported by Donegal County Council and Creative Ireland through the Culture & Creativity Project Award, reflecting a shared ambition to explore new and creative ways of engaging audiences with the past. Museum Manager Marty Gilroy described the project as an important early step in developing the museum’s cultural programming through collaboration with local artists and creatives.
For Know Promises, being part of that process reinforced our belief in theatre as something that can exist beyond the conventional stage in museums, heritage sites, public spaces and unexpected environments.
All Aboard the Wee Donegal was a celebration of Donegal’s railway heritage, but also of collaboration: bringing together Dark Daughter Productions, Maura Logue, Know Promises Theatre Collective, the Donegal Railway Heritage Museum and local cultural partners to create a theatrical experience rooted in place, community and memory.
A railway station that once carried people across Donegal became, for a few hours, a living stage again.
And the stories got back on board.
