A Student Edition of this 2021 play, exploring its themes of sexuality, emigration and time, as well as its use of drag and other queer performance aesthetics.

Told against the backdrop of Dublin's burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, Once Before I Go explores the bonds of Irish queer lives across three decades in Dublin, London and Paris.

This Student Edition includes commentary and notes by Fintan Walsh, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, which look at the play's themes of sexuality, emigration, time and relationships, as well as its style as a realistic three-part drama that draws on queer performance aesthetics, such as drag, camp, music, idioms and queer culture references.

It also considers the cultural context of the world of the play for the gay community compared to today's world in which queer rights and representation have become the relative norm.

The edition includes an original interview with the playwright.

"Once Before I Go is a play that implores us to join the dance, to live fully, to live without judgment, to live well." - Irish Times

"McMahon's dark-humoured, powerful play says more about Ireland than reams of opinion columns." - The Times