Ballymoney Drama Festival

 Slemish Players

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Produced by

Josie Corr

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WARNING

strong language & adult themes

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This play is set in the drawing room of a dilapidated Edwardian house in Dublin, now a bedsit for Tommy and his friend Doc. Tommy's uncle, Maurice, lives upstairs. All three men scrape by from day to day until Tommy rescues a young woman from a beating in the street. As events unfold, McPherson explores themes of loneliness and guilt, mixing humour, violence and the possibility of redemption with a hint of the supernatural. 

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When The Night Alive premiered in the Donmar Warehouse in 2013 with Ciaran Hinds in the role of Doc, it was hailed as 'a masterstroke' and the Financial Times  said it 'shows McPherson at his compassionate best'.

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That successful production transferred to New York where it won the  Drama Critics' Award for best play in 2014. Time Out described it as ' a spellbinding and absolutely gorgeous play by one of the true poets of the theatre.'

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Conor McPherson (born in Dublin in 1971) is widely recognised as one of the best contemporary Irish playwrights. His best known play,The Weir,  won the Laurence Olivier Award for best new play in 1999 and subsequent works have achieved considerable success and critical acclaim in London, Dublin and New York. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by University College Dublin  in 2013 in recognition of his contribution to world theatre, 

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Liam Neeson started his acting career with Slemish Players. Over the years the company, which is based in Ballymena, has won numerous awards at local Drama Festivals and reached the Ulster Finals. 

 

Theatre 3, Newtownabbey    

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Produced by

Maureen Dunn

 

A gentle comedy about three widows who meet once a month for tea and to visit their husbands' graves. These long-time friends have contrasting characters: Ida is happy with memories of the late husband, would-be party girl Lucille is ready to move on, Doris is still devoted to Abe. Then they meet Sam.  As things begin to change, the play explores older-life relationships and finding happiness after adversity.  

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Ivan Menchell  was born in 1961. He is a producer and writer, best known for Bonnie and Clyde the Musical and The Cemetery Club. The latter opened on Broadway in 1990 and was made into a film in 1993.

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Theatre 3 was formed in 1984 when three companies in the Newtownabbey area decided to join forces. In the last 40 years Theatre 3 have successfully produced a multitude of plays from local comedies for Summer Theatre to classics by the likes of Sean O'Casey, Graham Reid, Harold Pinter and Lee Blessing.  They have regularly appeared in the Ulster, Irish and British Drama Festival Finals and represented Northern Ireland at last year's British One Act Finals for the third consecutive time

 

Bart Players

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Produced by Gillian Porter

Denis Geoghegan is 'the whiteheaded boy' - the apple of his widowed mother's eye and the butt of his siblings' resentment. When he returns to his Irish small-town home from Trinity College the household are thrown into a frenzy but when they learn that he has failed his exams yet again, some of his family decide it is time to ship him off to Canada. Denis, of course, has other plans for his future. 

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Although set in the early twentieth century, this perceptive comedy about Irish village life has long been popular with Festival audiences and is still relevant today. 

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Irish dramatist, poet, theatre producer and director, Lennox Robinson, was born in Co Cork in 1886, the youngest of seven children in a Protestant, Unionist household. His interest in theatre began in 1907 when he was taken to see a production of plays by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory at the Cork Opera House. His own play, The Cross Roads, was performed at the Abbey two years later and he became manager of the theatre several months after that. He was appointed to the board of the Abbey in 1923 and continued to serve in that capacity until his death in 1958.  

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Bart Players have been  based in Belfast for over sixty years. They perform three shows per season, from light comedies to serious dramas, at their home venue, the Canon Lindsay Hall, St Bartholemew's, Stranmillis and across Northern Ireland.  They will be representing Northern Ireland at the British One Act Finals this summer. 

Rosemary DramaGroup

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Produced by

Ian McDonald

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WARNING

strong language

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Lee Israel took New York by storm with her Holywood biographies. Then it all crashed. Jobless, penniless, and with a massive vet's bill for her beloved cat, she descended into the criminal world of forged celebrity letters. Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Humphrey Bogart: she faked them all. And raked it in. But suspicions circled and the FBI was closing in ...

Outrageous, hilarious, touching and true...ish. Can you ever forgive her?

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Born in 1960, Ian McDonald, has been writing professionally for forty years. He’s written 24 novels, and four story collections and won many of the field’s major awards. He’s a regular guest at international festivals and teaches science-fiction and fantasy and workshop in Ireland, the US and China. His most recent book is The Wilding, a sharp little horror novel, published by Gollancz in September 2024. 

Ian worked for 16 years in television. His first script was Doomwatch: Winter Angel: a feature by Working Title Television and Vanson Productions for Channel 5, starring Trevor Eve. He worked for many years in development in documentary and lifestyle programming and was Head of Development for Flickerpix Animations. He was deviser and show-runner for Sesame Workshop’s Sesame Tree.In 2024 he completed a MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast and has recently started a PhD.

He is a long-standing member of Rosemary Drama Group, and directed for the group on many occasions.Can You Ever Forgive Me? is his first full-length piece for stage.

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 Rosemary is the largest and most active drama group in North Belfast. Its members stage three plays every year , both in one act and full length format, as well as their very popular Summer Theatre production. They have enjoyed considerable success on the Festival circuit and in recent years the group has featured in both the British and Irish finals.  This year's play was written by a long-established member of the group. 

Belvoir Players, 

 

Produced by 

Mark McClean

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 Belvoir Players have kindly volunteered to stage this one act production in Ballymoney. It will not be competing in the Festival but was a finalist at the Northern Ireland One Act Festival earlier this year.  

                                         The Final Adjudication  will take place after the Interval. 

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A one act comedy showing us the extraordinary in ordinary lives. Cool Guy has settled on a park bench to read the paper when a woman rushes on and leaves a box on the bench with instructions that it cannot be moved, tilted or opened. 

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A series of motley characters then arrive, each with a different theory about the contents of the box. As the tension mounts, Cool Guy becomes more and more exasperated.

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Will you guess what is in the box before all is finally revealed?

 

 

​​Stephen Bean was born in 1960 in East Yorkshire where he still lives. He has worked as a stockman and an A&E nurse and is currently a support worker for the learning disabled with responsibility for drama. ​Bean is a member of 'Theatre in the Wolds', an amateur group who perform mostly original work. Their entry into the All England Festival of One Act Plays drew attention to Stephen's writing , with the group winning Best New Play for five consecutive years. 

​A Little Box of Oblivion has been described as a good example of Bean's style, combining humour with a sense of the absurd 

 

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Belvoir Players Amateur Dramatic Society was formed in 1968 in answer to a perceived need for some cultural and artistic outlet in the new housing estate that had recently been built in Belvoir Park . With several performances each year, the  group's reputation and expertise have grown steadily and Belvoir Players have become a significant part of amateur theatre life in Northern Ireland. 

​Their Belvoir Studio, opened in  in 2000, has hosted numerous performances by amateur and professional companies and allowed the development of their Youth Academy which now has a membership of some 150 young people. We are delighted to welcome them back to the stage in Ballymoney. 

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