36TH CITY OF DERRY
DRAMA FESTIVAL
3RD – 11TH March 2017
Tickets £11 or £9 if booked before Monday 27th February 2017 All performances at 8pm except Saturday 11th March at 7:30pm
SPECIAL OFFER - GET THREE NIGHTS FOR THE PRICE OF TWO For tickets/information visit www.watersidetheatre.com or call the theatre box office on 028 7131 4000
Chairman’s Foreword Welcome to this our 36th Festival. The City of Derry Drama Festival Committee have been working away once again to bring you, our audience, another varied and challenging programme. Over seven nights the competing groups from throughout the island of Ireland, will stage their very different productions in the Waterside Theatre. They will be awarded points by our adjudicator, Aodh McCay. Our groups can qualify for both the All-Ireland and the Ulster Finals. As the valued audience, you have an opportunity to play your part in this competition too. Hopefully, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, but most importantly we hope that you will have enjoyed the 36th City of Derry Drama Festival and will look forward to attending again next spring. The Festival Committee looks forward to welcoming one and all to what will hopefully be a memorable feast of theatre. Book your tickets now! Yours sincerely Mark Conway Chairman
Message from our Special Guest – Dame Mary Peters Dear Friends, May I take this opportunity to welcome you to the Waterside Theatre for your drama festival and thank you for inviting me to attend. I love theatre productions and indeed appeared in all my school plays, way back when, and it is good to know that drama is still important across the Province. This year we are honoured to be hosting the British Finals in The Mac Theatre in Belfast on 7th and 8th July so I hope you will also support this event. Have a wonderful evening. Good luck to all the competing teams. Dame Mary Peters President Association of Ulster Drama Festivals.
Our Adjudicator
Aodh Mc Cay MA, ADA Aodh is a freelance professional director and has been involved in the amateur drama circuit for over thirty years. He has received numerous awards for directing and acting in festivals throughout Ireland qualifying into and appearing in many All Ireland Finals. He has directed over sixty productions and played leading roles in performances including: ‘Why Not Stay For Breakfast?’, ‘Run For Your Wife’, ‘Twelve Angry Men’, ‘Caught in the Net ‘, ‘Bookworms’, ‘Stella By Starlight’, ‘The Last Apache Reunion’, ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come’, ‘I Do Not Like Thee, Dr Fell’, ‘A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant’, ‘The Passing Day’, and ‘Bedroom Farce’. Aodh has also professionally directed stage musicals including: ‘Grease’, ‘All Shook Up’, ‘Annie the Musical’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Back to the Eighties’, ‘Oliver’; ‘Blood Brothers’, ‘Jungle Book’, ‘Sean agus an Gas Ponaire’, ‘Oklahoma’, ‘Bugsy Malone’, ‘Calamity Jane’, ‘Wizard of Oz’, and the opera, “Carmen”. He has written and directed over twenty different pantomime productions that received acclaim for their originality and comedy and also tutors workshops in acting and directing for adults and young adults. Aodh is presently working on a commission from BBC writing animation screenplays. Aodh’s qualifications include MA in Education/Drama and he is an experienced teacher and senior examiner. Since becoming a member of the Association of Drama Adjudicators in Ireland, Aodh has adjudicated Strabane Drama Festival, Newtownabbey One act Drama Festival; Castlereagh, Belfast Drama Festival and Ballymahon Drama Festival and will adjudicate North West Youth Drama Festival in May this year. He is delighted to be adjudicating the prestigious City of Derry Drama Festival having had the pleasure of participating on and off stage in many previous City of Derry festivals.
LIST OF PERFORMANCES Friday 3rd March 2017
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom/Jeffrey Hatcher (Confined) performed by Backburners Drama Group
Saturday 4th March 2017
The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey (Open) performed by Kilmuckridge Drama Group
Sunday 5th March 2017
Eclipsed by Patricia Burke Brogan (Confined) performed by Pomeroy Players
Wednesday 8th March 2017
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (Open) performed by Letterkenny Music and Drama Group
Thursday 9th March 2017
Heroes by Gérald Sibleyras and translated by Tom Stoppard (Open) performed by Theatre 3 (Newtownabbey)
Friday 10th March 2017
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (Open) performed by Butt Drama Circle
Saturday 11th March
The Loves of Cass McGuire by Brian Friel (Confined) performed by Coolgreany Amateur Dramatic Society
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Friday 3rd March Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom/Jeffrey Hatcher (Confined) performed by Backburners Drama Group
Tuesdays with Morrie is the autobiographical story of Mitch Albom, a journalist driven solely by his career and Morrie Schwartz, his former college professor. Sixteen years after graduation Mitch happens to catch Morrie’s appearance on a television show and learns that his old professor is battling Lou Gehrig’s disease, a form of motor neurone disease. Mitch is reunited with Morrie and what starts as a simple visit turns into a weekly pilgrimage and a class on the meaning of life. Unforgettable! No matter how you tell the story the play makes it more vivid, more shattering, more humorous - New York Times A touching life-affirming, deeply emotional drama with a generous dose of humourNew York Daily News
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Saturday 4th March 2017 The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey (Open) performed by Kilmuckridge Drama Group
Donal Davoren and Seamus Shields are roommates in a Dublin tenement. For no particular reason Donal is looked upon by the other residents of the tenement as being a gunman in the service of the Irish Republican Party, but he is merely a dreaming poet who rather enjoys the mystery that has been built up around him. One of the Republicans calls on Donal and Seamus and leaves a bag containing bombs in their room. When their house is raided by the authorities, Minnie Powell, a friend, offers to hide the bag in her room never dreaming that they would search her. But the deed is discovered, and Minnie, in trying to resist arrest is shot.
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Sunday 5th March 2017 Eclipsed by Patricia Burke Brogan (Confined) performed by Pomeroy Players
The play is set in 1963 in a convent laundry at St Paul’s home for penitent women in Kilmacha, Ireland. Eclipsed explores the practice of making pregnant and unwanted Irish mothers work as “penitents” in church run laundries. Supervised by nuns who regarded these women as mindless vessels of evil, the women were treated as virtual slaves and their infants were forcibly put up for adoption.
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Wednesday 8th March 2017 Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (Open) performed by Letterkenny Music and Drama Group
LETTERKENNY MUSIC & DRAMA GROUP present
EUGENE O'NEILL'S
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
Long Day’s Journey Into Night takes place on a single day in August 1912 from 8:30am to midnight in the Connecticut summer home of the Tyrone family. When the fateful day dawns, the tension is already obvious, as James Tyrone and his two sons, Edmund and Jamie, have each noticed that Mary has spent the night before in the guest room where she used to take morphine. Having believed that she had kicked her habit, is she now back on the drug? As the day progresses, more and more problems mount for the Tyrone family as it becomes increasingly clear they will eventually have to confront the demons of their past.
Thursday 9th March 2017 Heroes by Gérald Sibleyras and translated by Tom Stoppard (Open) performed by Theatre 3 (Newtownabbey)
Adapted from Gerald Sibleyras’ Le Vent des Peupliers, is a gentle comedy. In this hilarious but poignant translation, we meet three World War 1 veterans who pass their monotony-filled days in a military hospital by engaging in verbal battles of long-forgotten military campaigns, grumbling about the staff and reflections on their lives. Gustave, Philippe and Henri – war heroes all – are plotting an escape. While keeping each other company on the back patio, they hatch a plan to escape to Indochina, or at least picnic under the Poplars on a nearby hill. Winner of London’s prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, Tom Stoppard’s adaption of this French play is playful, bawdy and heartbreakingly funny.
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Friday 10th March 2017 Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (Open) performed by Butt Drama Circle
Dancing at Lughnasa is a 1990 play by dramatist Brian Friel, loosely based on the lives of Friel's mother and aunts and set in County Donegal in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg. It is a Memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator. He recounts the summer in his aunts' cottage when he was seven years old and how the family welcomes home the frail elder brother, who has returned from a life as a missionary in Africa. However, as the summer ends, the family foresees the sadness and economic privations under which they will suffer as all hopes fade. The play describes a bitter harvest for the Mundy sisters, a time of reaping what has been sown. She begins living off past memories like the rest and though her memories now have a bitter taste, we know that in time and with the telling they will be suffused with the aura of pleasant dreams, like those of all the rest.
Saturday 11th March 2017 The Loves of Cass McGuire by Brian Friel (Confined) performed by Coolgreany Amateur Dramatic Society
Cass McGuire has worked a block from Skid Row, among deadbeats and washouts -- people who live in the past. This play deals with her return to Ireland and her genteel family's rejection of her. It follows her lonely struggle to re-discover the home she's dreamt of all her life and her eventual surrender to the 'make believe' of Eden House. After fifty-two years of romping as a saloon waitress in America, Cass goes home to Ireland. But the brother and his family to whom she turns really have no need for her, and ship her off to a rest haven for old dreamers. Nothing is as Cass envisioned it. She begins living off past memories like the rest and though her memories now have a bitter taste, we know that in time and with the telling they will be suffused with the aura of pleasant dreams, like those of all the rest.
Acknowledgements As always, we are so grateful to our sponsors, who are featured in this programme, for their financial support for the 2017 festival, all of which makes the festival possible. Thank you also to those individuals and organisations who provide all of our trophies as listed below. Trophies and Awards Overall Festival Winner donated by James Doherty Meats Overall Winner (Confined Section) donated by Bobby Bell Overall Winner (Open Section) donated by Austin & Co Limited Best Actor donated by Brian Coulter Best Actress donated by Brian Coulter Best Supporting Actress donated by George Devlin Best Supporting Actor donated by Oliver and Mary McGrory Best Producer (Open Section) donated by Jack Gallagher Best Producer (Confined Section) donated by Barney Toal Best Stage Manager donated by Stage Services North Best Lighting donated by S & W Faller Best Set donated by Jim and Ita Patton Best Moment of Theatre donated by George Devlin Bets Play by an Irish Author in an Irish Setting donated by Kevin and Anna McLaughlin Audience Award donated by Michael Gillen CreatePrint (028)71353504