This article is from page 33 of the 2008-04-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 33 JPG
THE players of the Corofin Drama Society will next week make the long trek to Strabane in Tyrone where they will fly the flag for Clare in the All- Ireland One-Act Play Finals.
The society has cleaned the boards in all competitions so far this year, taking four first-place and two sec- ond-place finishes out of six com- petitions, and are full of confidence going up north.
Local people are being offered one last chance to catch their spectacular production of “The Beauty Queen of Leenane’, which will be staged in Corofin this Friday, April 11 from §.30pm.
“It’s a great play in the first place. It’s a lot easier to get an audience to really enjoy a play if it’s a great play to begin with,’ said producer John Clancy.
“Our cast in this play deserve a lot of credit. They have won a lot of awards among them for their per- formances. But the unsung heroes are the guys who work behind the scenes, who set off at eight in the morning and get the show ready and then bring the whole lot home at God knows what time when everything is finished. You can’t do it without these people.”
This will be the society’s last time to play in front of a home audience before they take on the best in the
country at the national finals, which will take place in Strabane from Friday, April 18 to Saturday, 26 of ele
“This is our second time reaching the All-Ireland. The last time was in 1985 with a production of *Phila- delphia Here I Come’. We still have a few of the people involved from those days. We have Eileen Lahiffe, Peter Daffy, Rhona Lyons and Willie Lahiffe, of course,’ continued John.
“We did the play in Corofin before we Started on the circuit. We got a great response. There would always be a good regular crowd here in Corofin who would come along and tell you what they thought about it.
“But now that we have had that bit
of extra success, we are hoping to get some local people who might not usually come to plays to come along. The parish is buzzing with talk about the play so we are hoping that we will get a lot of new people in for a look.”
The Corofin Drama Society are the only Clare group to make it as far as the All-Ireland Final this year.