Tag Archives: Clare Drama Festival

IT’S CURTAIN up in Scariff for the 74th Clare Drama Festival which begins on Friday, March 24 in the Community College hall.  Chairman, Eamon Moroney, has promised a feast of entertainment for nine nights. The festival will be officially opened by Coman Keaveny, Chair of the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland. (ADCI) The adjudicator Tom Byrne ADA is no stranger to Scariff audiences, but in a different capacity, having directed Bradán Players for many years. The first performance will be Brideview Drama Group from Waterford with ‘The Father’ by Florian Zeller. This play is a thrilling exploration of who we are to ourselves when our signposts disappear with age. Saturday, March 25 sees Kilmeen Drama Group from West Cork with ‘Blithe Spirit’ by Noel Coward. This comedy will resonate with Clare Drama festival audiences, who have fond memories of Scariff’s 1993 All Ireland winning performance of the play. On Sunday, March 26, Ray Leonard Players from Claremorris bring Jimmy Murphy’s …

LIVE drama makes a welcome return to East Clare later this month and, as part of that, John B Keane’s legendary leading lady Big Maggie will be making an appearance. Tulla Drama Group is staging the classic tale of sex, land and money at Tulla Courthouse this week from Wednesday, March 23 until Friday March 25 and Big Maggie will also feature in the feast of drama that will be on offer as part of the 73rd Clare Drama Festival. After a hiatus due to the pandemic, the event is back from Friday, March 25 to Saturday, April 2 in Scariff.  The festival opens on Friday, March 25 at Scariff Community College Hall. Big Maggie will be back on stage there on Wednesday, March 30.  Other highlights of this year’s festival will include a performance of Sive by the Clan Machua Drama Group on March 25. Meanwhile, on Saturday, March 26, Skibbereen Theatre Society will perform Brighton by Jim Nolan. …

CLARE Drama Festival stalwart Tom Hanley is among 15 actors and organisers chosen by RTÉ to feature in a special short film to celebrate Ireland’s vibrant amateur drama circuit. While May is, ordinarily, the month when the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival takes place in Athlone, the Dean Crowe Theatre will lie empty for a second year in a row due to pandemic restrictions. In existence since the early 1950s, the festival has been deferred to 2022. However, actors from a range of the regional festival locations, including Clare, have come together to mark what should have been the 69th RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival. Mr Hanley is among those to lend their voices and faces to a 2-minute film entitled ‘Interval’, a piece written by Joseph Hoban. Produced by RTÉ’s Tracey Diamond, the film focuses on the enforced ‘interval’ the pandemic created in the lives of people nationally and globally. It is a reflection on lockdown and the restrictions that have …

AWARD winners have been revealed in the very first Clare Drama Radio Play Festival which concluded its hugely successful run on Easter Sunday night. The initiative involved groups from around the country sending their pre-recorded short dramas to Scariff Bay Community Radio (SBCR) who broadcast a feast of radio plays in collaboration with Clare Drama Festival. Ranked in first place for their production of When I Was God was the Kilmeen Drama Group, who received the The Alan Sparling Perpetual Trophy. The Clonakilty-based group beat off stiff competition from six other short-listed companies, including the Doonbeg Drama Group and the Sliabh Aughty Drama Group. The award for direction also went to Kilmeen with Denis O’Sullivan taking that prize. The title of Best Actress went to Muriel Caslin O’Hagan from Balally Players, for her role as Marion in Pizzazz, while Best Supporting Actress went to Lasairfhíona Kennedy for her role as Tríona in Manic Monday with the Sliabh Aughty Drama Group. …

A FESTIVAL of radio plays, hosted by Scariff Bay Community Radio (SBCR), has been lauded by one of the national amateur drama umbrella groups for finding keeping the flag flying for local theatre, in the teeth of the Level 5 lockdown. Joanne Keane, Chairperson of The Drama League of Ireland (DLI), described The Clare Drama Radio Play Festival, which runs at weekends until Easter Sunday night, April 4, as “hugely successful and innovative”. Ms Keane opened the festival earlier this month and will make a virtual presentation to the overall winners of the Alan Sparling Perpetual Trophy. While thousands of people across the country would normally be involved in the national festival circuit at this time of year, the pandemic put paid to that and caused deep disappointment across the amateur drama community. As a response to the restrictions, SBCR teamed up with the long-established Clare Drama Festival to provide an outlet for the drama groups and audiences who would …

SATURDAY will see the start of the very first Clare Drama Radio Play Festival, which takes to the airwaves on Scariff Bay Community Radio (SBCR). The inaugural event brings the station together with the long-established Clare Drama Festival to ensure that actors and their audiences get to enjoy the finest local theatrical productions in their own homes. Proceedings kick off on the East Clare community radio station with a special festival programme hosted by Eoin O’Hagan at 8pm on Saturday next. Thereafter, the drama will continue on Saturdays, and Sundays, presented by Festival PRO Tom Hanley, from March 7 until the final night on Easter Sunday, April 4. “The Clare Drama Radio Play Festival is a perfect addition to the schedule of SBCR and an antidote to the continuing lockdown for both the listeners to the local station as well as the devotees of amateur drama throughout Ireland,” a spokesperson for the station said. “This brand new drama festival is …

WITH the normally vibrant amateur drama circuit among the casualties of pandemic restrictions, a new creative initiative aims to bring some of the best local acting, writing and directing talent to the airwaves early next year. Scariff Bay Community Radio together with The Clare Drama Festival have launched the inaugural Clare Drama Radio Play Festival, which will be broadcast on the community station in the spring. The station will also work with local national schools to bring short plays, written by pupils, to the airwaves. The Clare Drama Festival is one of the most popular and longest-running in Ireland and its loss, along with the cancellation of all other theatrical events, has been a huge loss to East Clare. “The amateur drama circuit like so many other cultural activities has been in hibernation since March this year,” said Eoin O’Hagan, PRO of Scariff Bay Community Radio. “Several festivals had been up and running and with the lockdown were forced to …

FOR a young actor, being in lock-down while some of your highest-profile work graces screens around the world, must be something of an anti-climax. For Frank Blake, the enforced isolation in his native Tuamgraney, during the height of the buzz around Normal People, is not without its advantages, however. Frank, who plays the complex character of Alan in the adaptation of the award-nominated novel by Sally Rooney, has been using the time to explore his own screen-writing abilities. Given that his great aunt, Edna O’Brien, is one of the country’s greatest living authors, it’s probably a safe bet that he has more than a little literary talent. Now based in Dublin, the actor has been clocking up significant screen and stage roles, including a part in Druid’s landmark production of Richard III. He returned to East Clare shortly before the lock-down was announced, and just as the BBC3’s Normal People, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, was set for a stratospheric launch. …