For You …… The Audience …. From the Groups

Welcome to the play. Dead words from a printed page are now a live world at the bright end of a darkened room. And it’s all yours. Nobody can ever really say, “I saw this one before”, because you never did see this. This is one vision of one happening, one group’s opening up to an idea, and with the best ones you don’t know what’s going to happen. DANGER: PEOPLE AT WORK.

And how many people there are. Up there on the stage you see some, but you don’t see them all. You may know about the directors, the actors, the set designers, you may even catch a glimpse of a stage manager, but unless you have been with them through the past weeks and months you won’t begin to understand. You have never met the hangers-up of posters, the standers in cold box-offices, the movers of chairs and usherers to seats, the hammerers of nails and takers of notes, the visitors to rehearsals and drivers of cars, the writers of letters and climbers of ladders, the makers of sounds and lighters of lights, the painters of canvas and lenders of props. They are the real people, the ones without whom it won’t all hang together, the ones who must not be forgotten.

from All-Ireland Drama Festival Programme, Sligo, May 1979