Curtain up for the Kildare Drama Festival tonight
The annual Kildare Drama Festival starts tonight, Friday March 10 and runs until
Friday, March 16.
Running from searing drama to hilarious comedy the drama festival promises to be a tonic in these troubled times. Admission is €12 concessions for children and OAPs is €10. The season ticket for all 6 nights is recession proof at only €45.
Tickets are available at Kildare Town Heritage Centre at 045 530672 and at the Box Office. Performances start each night at 8pm.
Festival Chairperson Noreen Quinlivan confirmed that committee are putting the final touches to the festival.
“We are hosting an all Open Festival this year and are looking forward to six nights of top class theatre. We are really looking forward to welcoming the drama groups and the audiences old friends and new to the festival. We will have a special welcome to any audience members who are travelling on their own and those nervous about venturing out.
"Special thanks to our patrons and local businesses who continue to give us great support. Thanks also to Kildare Credit Union and Kildare County Council who are our principal sponsors. We also look forward to welcoming our adjudicator Michael McCabe who will share his vast knowledge of the theatre and the performances with the audiences each night”.
The festival kicks off on Thursday 10 March with Prosperous Drama Group with Oleanna by David Mamet's Oleanna; a powerful, explores the destructiveness of miscommunication and excessive political correctness. It is a play about academic politics, student/teacher relationships, and sexual harassment presented by former All Ireland Winners Prosperous
Drama Group.
Saturday, March 11 sees regular visitors Bridge Drama Group from Wexford take to the stage with Big Big Sky by Tom Wells a wistful play full of warmth, humour and emotional truths. The play explores nature’s influence on love, friendship and family…the belief that anyone who’s lost can be found, even in the remotest of places.
The festival resumes again on Monday, March 13 with new visitors to Kildare Hinterland with a play that needs little introduction The Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge Don’t miss this chance to catch a masterpiece of the Irish literary renaissance.
Recent confined All Ireland winners Holy Cross/Ballycahill from Tipperary present A Skull in Connemara by Martin McDonagh on Tuesday night. McDonagh the toast of Broadway and now the bound for the Oscars! Don’t miss this opportunity to catch the least produced of McDonagh’s fabled Leenane trilogy the precursor to the Banshees of Inishsherriin.
Regular Kildare visitors Bunclody/Kilmyshall Drama Group present The Night Alive by Conor McPherson on Wednesday 15 th March. McPherson another great Irish playwright tells a story that flutters between the dramatic and comedic realms, The Night Alive is a play that explores the lives of a few lost souls...and a chance connection that may change their lives.
On Thursday 16, of Brideview Drama Group bring down the curtain of the festival with The Father by Florian Zeller, a tragi-comic mystery, a sobering and realistic family story, and an unsentimental, emotionally intense look at the world through the eyes of a man experiencing dementia, a dramatic illustration of the physical losses which occur along with the mental ones.