Tag Archives: stage

THE Doonbeg One-Act Drama Festival takes place this weekend with a host of drama groups from around the county and the country treading the boards. Sliabh Aughty, Mountshannon; Amphitheatre Company, Kilkee and Castlewood Players, Cratloe will fly the Clare fly and will be joined on stage by groups from Cork, Kildare, Wexford and Waterford. The Sliabh Aughty group has selected Chasing Butterflies, which is written by Mountshannon writer Siobhán Donnellan, while Amphitheatre Company, Kilkee will perform Healing The Dead by John Hanrahan. Cratloe’s Castlewood Players will perform Faint Voices by John McKenna and all three groups are competing in the confined section. Also competing in the confined are Skibbereen Theatre Society with No Romance Act 2 by Nancy Harris and Coolgreany Drama Group (Wexford) with The Quiet Land by Malachy McKenna. Competing groups in the open section are Kilmeen Drana Group (Cork) with Whodidit, Insight Theatre group (Kildare) with Love in a Glass Jar, Rasper Players (Wexford) with Me and …

Seamount College will stage two performances of Hairspray the Musical in Kilcornan Hall, Clarinbridge on Thursday, November 13 and Friday, November 14 at 8pm. There will also be two matinee shows each day at 10.30am. The show will be performed and staged by the school’s Transition Year and second year students, following the tradition of highly successful musicals from Seamount. The show is led by choreographer Cherie Worthington Eyre and musical director Sinéad O’Reilly. The story of this year’s musical is set in Baltimore, Maryland. It follows the life of dancer Tracy Turnblad. Dealing with discrimination in 1960s United States, the story revolves around Tracy’s efforts to get everyone to dance and sing together regardless of gender, body weight or race. Together Tracy and her friends bring the audience on a humorous adventure meeting an array of diverse characters along the way. Aoife Lavelle takes on the lead role of Tracy with Sarah Murphy playing Penny Pingelton, Grace Wallis as …

Meetings of Clare’s most famous names is the premise for a one-man show to be staged in the north and east of the county later this year. Lisdoonvarna man Gerry Howard will star in the performance Hats Off To Clare, written and directed by Mountshannon resident, Paul Brennan. The production will explore the imagined interactions of Clare’s most famous factual and fictional characters. Gerry was involved in amateur drama for years before taking the leap into professional acting and it was around the time he decided to leave his career as a hotelier that the seed was sown for this particular production. “I was always involved in amateur acting. I think I started around the age of 12. I was involved in plays with the Lisdoonvarna Dramatic Society and was involved right up to when I sold the hotel, The Carrigann in Lisdoonvarna. When I sold it, it seemed to be a great opportunity to have a cut at something …