Moate One Act Drama Festival Debuts This Weekend

This year Tuar Ard in conjunction with Moate Action Group is delighted to host the Moate One Act Drama Festival for the first time as part of All-Ireland One-Act Drama Circuit. Over the course of three nights it is our wish to bring to you a wonderful mix of comedy and drama performed by both newcomers and seasoned performers. Nine different plays will be shown over three nights in both Open and Confined Sections with the winners qualifying for One Act All-Ireland Finals in association with the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland and the Drama League of Ireland.

The line-up for the festival is as follows:

Thursday, October 27th Sunday, October 30th

Sliabh Aughty Players (C)
CLARE
Chasing Butterflies
Playwright: Siobhán Donnellan
Director: Siobhán Donnellan
Chasing Butterflies tells the story of two parents recalling the night each of them lost a child; one to death, the other to darkness. Annie Caryford's seventeen year old daughter is missing. Big Story Hannigan has no idea what to do when his beloved son returns home covered in someone else's blood. What happens when the dead are more alive than those they leave behind?

Bailieborough Drama Group (C)

CAVAN
The Sacred Heart's Right Hand Man
Playwright: Liz O'Hanlon
Director: Conor Sheridan
The Sacred Heart's Right Hand Man is a one act play with lots of comedy, emotion and egos!! It is a concoction of life, a little bit of laughter and a little bit of love. It asks hard questions about loss. It is Mark and Ruby's journey which takes them on two different paths.

Camross Drama (C)
WEXFORD
In for a Penny
Playwright: Mary Brown
Director: Mary Brown
Set in the back room of a cottage in the present day.
Through tragedy came love, through love came tragedy.

Friday, October 28th

Kilmuckridge Drama Group (C)

WEXFORD
McGowan - The Long Wet Grass, The Boys Swam Before Me
Playwright: Séamus Scanlon
Director: Marjorie Gahan
The Long Wet Grass: Callow Lake - Foxford, Co. Mayo. 14th August 1985, pre-dawn
The Boys Swam Before Me: Nursing Home in Co Galway. 14th August 1986, Night.

An Nuadha Player (O)

KILDARE
Breathing Lessons
Playwright: Martina Reilly
Director: Martina Reilly
What is parenthood? What is being a mother really like? Debbie thinks she knows. Debbie's husband thinks she's bonkers (his words) and so packs her off to talk to Sylvie, therapist and expectant mother. As Debbie expounds her 'brotherhood of motherhood' theories during the counselling session, Sylvie begins to wonder if Debbie's husband was right. But she soon learns that there is far more going on with Debbie than just parenting woes. And Debbie learns that maybe this woman with the 'nice clean windows' has more in common with her than she first thought.

No Drama Theatre (O)
DUBLIN
Hardboiled
Playwright: Jonathan Shortall
Director: Jonathan Shortall
The rain hammers down. Parts of the puzzle are starting to slot into place, but are the clues all they seem? The pieces are moving on the board, but is everyone playing the same game? Somebody is dead, stabbed through the heart. Somebody is running from the law, looking for a saviour. Somebody is out for revenge, relentlessly tracking their prey. Somebody doesn't see why this couldn't all wait till the morning. But Frank O'Hara is on the scene, and that means someone's body on the floor.

Moat Club (O)
KILDARE
A Visitor from Hollywood
Playwright: Neil Simon
Director: Padraic Doyle
Set on the seventh floor the Plaza Hotel in room 719 on a sunny afternoon. Jesse Kiplinger, a successful Hollywood producer has arranged a rendezvous with his childhood sweetheart Muriel Tate whom he has not seen for seventeen years. What's behind Jesse's invitation to Muriel and why is Muriel so eager to accept? As the plot unfolds, this hilarious comedy will keep you guessing to the very end.

PIC Players (C)

OFFALY
Seven Stages of an Affair
Playwright: Lorraine Forrest-Turner
Director: Aidan Digan
Seven Stages of an Affair is a witty take on an extra-marital affair. Caroline is married to dependable Robert, has two children and works in an employment agency. When Tony Brunetti comes in for an interview, she is immediately attracted by his flirtatious charm. So begins the slippery slide into an affair that becomes more passionate and dangerous as it progresses. Clandestine meetings in hotel rooms and deceit piled on deceit jeopardise both their marriages as they go through the seven stages of an affair.

Athlone Little Theatre (O)

Westmeath

War Stories
Playwright: Emma Gibson and Rob Johnson
Director: Oliver Hegarty
War Stories was written by two writers on different sides of the globe. Australian, Emma Gibson collaborated via email and Skype with Rob Johnston in the UK to create this sometimes intense, compassionate and emotionally engaging, sweet little gem of a play. Largely based on actual material from the archives, the piece is set in an isolated hospital bedroom in France during the fringes of World War 1, where we meet Australian nurse, Elsie and one of her patients, an English soldier, Bernard. Essentially it is a play about storytelling and memory. Through the storytelling we are given strong images of the minutia of life as well as the bleak descriptions of the Western Front. As the two share their stories, the enormity, and barbarity, of the world's first modern war is slowly and horrifically revealed. Although all war material is invariably tragic, this piece contains many beautiful moments of lightness and ease as the relationship between the two characters unfolds. The play reminds us how we use stories to guide us through the inexplicable.

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