Nice Surprise

An unusual Press Release this week from Sligo Drama Circle. Here it is:

“‘There is hope for the younger generation yet’ says a well-known television advertisement. These sentiments could well be echoed by Sligo Drama Circle’s ‘A Theatre for Sligo’ Committee last week. Imagine the surprised pleasure Walter Mc Donagh of the Circle got when some young ladies walked into his home and handed him an envelope on which was written “In aide of A Theatre for Sligo” – and eight names. Inside were he proceeds of a sale of work organised by these young actresses of the future, seven of them from Scoil Ursula and one from the Model School. What particularly pleased the Drama Circle was that the girls had thought up the idea themselves and carried it through without any prompting from their parents or teachers.

On second thoughts, maybe ‘actresses of the future’ isn’t all hat appropriate a title to give them as they have already proved their worth on the stage in Irish language plays during the last school year. The money collected will only go a small way towards putting a theatre in Temple Street, but the morale booster which their efforts gave to the hardworking fund-raisers of the Circle is tremendous. And at the opening of Summer Theatre the Drama Circle had the eight girls as special guests when Brendan O’ Brien of the Amateur Drama Council declared curtain up on Bernard Shaw’s “The Millionairess”. As Yeats might say – “We number them in our song”. Maeve Royston, Lynn Burnett, Mary Somers, Teresa Kent, Paula Murphy, Evelyn Kane, Yvonne Eames, and Nuala Mc Goldrick – we hope that it won’t be too long before you grace the stage in Temple Street!”

I second that…….

from The Sligo Champion, On the Line, by Seamus Finn, July 5th, 1974