Meet the New Faces to Join the Circle

New talent will be on stage during this year’s season of short plays by Sligo Drama Circle. It is the first year the group has run three shows in three weeks and director Ultan Burke said the focus was on getting new faces involved. They held auditions in September and seven new recruits were found. “There are a few who have not been on stage before. They are brave souls. It takes a lot of courage to even go to an audition”, Ultan said.

He hopes the new talent will participate in future productions. “One way of hanging onto people is to do more plays”, he said. There are ten people involved in this season of short plays. Four in the first play and three each in the other two plays. Seven have not acted with the Drama Circle before. They are Peter Deignan, Emily Treacy, Cian Murray, Angela Mc Guire, Liam Lynch, Felicity Kelly and Marketa Formanova from the Czech Republic.

“Some people have been involved before because you need the right people for the parts”, he said. They are: Ultan Burke, Peter Milne and Barry Deignan. Next week’s play is called “An evening With Heinrick Boll”. The following week there will be a performance of “The Nightingale and Not the Lark” by Jennifer Johnston. And last week’s play was “Almost Nothing” by Marcos Barbosa. “I picked them because the stories are good”, he added.

It takes ten rehearsals to put on a short play. They rehearse for an hour twice a week, in the evening. He explained that the actors are required to help out with sound, lighting and set design. “A guy who was a director today could be nailing a set together tomorrow. I am also in one of them [short plays] which is completely mad but someone had to pull out”, he added.

Ultan got involved with Sligo Drama Circle four years ago. “I was one of those people who always went to plays and thought, I would like to try that”, he said. Eventually he auditioned for a part, which he did not get, but was offered another one and the rest is history. He said it can be stressful organising three shows but he gets a buzz out of it after rehearsals. The beauty of the short plays, he says, is that you can try out plays that you could not try in a bigger venue.

“It is a great privilege to be able to say I want to do this and them saying fire away. So often you do not get the opportunity to do things”, he said. He says the various drama groups around town co-operate with each other and share things like sets. he estimates that around 100 people participate in the Drama Circle each year, and one year around 150 were involved in some way.

from “The Sligo Weekender: Go Magazine”, November 20th, 2007