April/May/June

Friday 5th & Saturday 6th April @ 8pm

St. Patrick Players, Cloverfield present Moll by John B.Keane

Keane’s wonderful comedy about a parish priest's housekeeper’s campaign to provide the parishioners with a decent church and school and to secure a just and lucrative retirement package for herself. Hilariously funny, "MOLL" is set in the parochial house in the town & parish of Ballast. When Canon Pratt & his two young curates engage Moll as their new housekeeper, Fr Brest and Fr Loran find their meals diminishing daily, while the Canon eats as heartily as ever. “When a presbytery gets a new house keeper it becomes like a country that gets a change in government, or like a family that gets a stepmother”. Moll Kettle would work for no less than a canon for, in her own words, “tis hard to come back to the plain black and white when one is used to the purple”.

Tickets €12/€10

Legend of Luke Kelly featuring Chris Kavanagh and the Patriots

On 30th January 1984 it is said that the whole of Ireland grieved the early death of Luke Kelly. He has left an indelible mark as being the greatest folk artist of the 20th Century. In October 2001 'A Tribute to Luke Kelly' was launched in Dublin's Hotpress HQ before an audience which included Luke's siblings and relations. Over the past ten years they have amazed audiences following powerful sell-out performances in prominent Irish venues with the regular attendance of the Kelly family. Having just returned from an 11 date tour of Germany with folk legends, The Dubliners, Chris Kavanagh brings his acclaimed ‘Legend of Luke Kelly’ show to Friars’ Gate.

Lead singer Chris Kavanagh‘s singing talents capture the depth and passion of the great man himself. He is joined on stage by accomplished musicians who all consider it an honour to bring Luke's memory to the stage in the ultimate tribute to the King of Balladeers.

Tickets €15

Friday 19th – Sunday 21st April

Words Apart – Literary Weekend

Our first literary weekend featuring writers and workshops including Donal Ryan (The Spinning Heart - Bord Gáis Energy Book of the Year 2012.), Paul Durcan, Eileen Sheehan, Stephen Murray, Helena Close and more.

Paul Durcan
Paul Durcan is one of Ireland's foremost poets. He was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, Endsville (1967), has been followed by more than twenty others, including The Berlin Wall Café (a Poetry Book Society Choice in 1985), Daddy, Daddy (winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990), A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems (1993), Cries of an Irish Caveman: New Poems (2001), The Art of Life (2004) and The Laughter of Mothers (2008). In 2009 he published a selection of his work from the previous forty years in one volume, Life is a Dream. His most recent book Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being was published to cricitical acclaim in 2012. In 2001 Paul Durcan received a Cholmondeley Award. He was the Ireland Professor of Poetry 2004-2007. In 2009 he was conferred with an honorary degree by Trinity College, Dublin. He is a member of Aosdána.

Eileen Sheehan
Eileen Sheehan: is from Killarney, Co Kerry. Her collections are Song of the Midnight Fox and Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books). Anthology publications include The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets (ed Joan McBreen/Salmon Poetry) and TEXT: A Transition Year English Reader (ed Niall MacMonagle/ Celtic Press). She tours with spiritual singer Noirín Ní Riain and actor Cora Fenton with a show entitled Women’s Voices Women’s Stories. She has worked as Poet in Residence with Limerick Co Council Arts Office and is on the organizing committee for Éigse Michael Hartnett Literary & Arts Festival. Her 3rd collection, The Narrow Place of Souls, is forthcoming.

Donal Ryan
Donal is 36 and comes from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. He lives in Limerick with his wife and two children. Donal’s first novel, The Spinning Heart, was co-published by The Lilliput Press and Doubleday Ireland. The Spinning Heart was one of the first literary novels to deal with the enormous social and human effects of Ireland’s financial collapse and the novel ‘speaks for contemporary Ireland like no other novel. Wry, vulnerable, all too human, it captures the language and sprit of rural Ireland and with uncanny perception articulates the words and thoughts of a generation’ (Transworld Ireland). The book won the Sunday Independent Best Irish Newcomer of It will be published in the UK and commonwealth in June by Random House. His second novel, The Thing About December, will be published in September 2013. Donal won Newcomer of the Year at the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2012. The Spinning Heart was voted overall Irish Book of the Year for 2012 and has been selected for this year’s Waterstone’s Eleven.

Wednesday 24th April @ 8pm

Film – Samsara Cert 12A

Prepare yourself for an unparalleled sensory experience. Filmed over a period of almost five years and in twenty-five countries, Samsara transports viewers to sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial sites, and natural wonders. By dispensing with dialogue and descriptive text, Samsara subverts the expectations of a traditional documentary, instead encouraging our own inner interpretations inspired by
images and music that infuses the ancient with the modern. A series of beautifully filmed, epic images scored with music by Philip Glass.

Tickets €6

Wednesday 1st May @ 8pm

How’s Your Father – Baalbec Actively Retired Drama Society.

Thursday 2nd May @ 8pm

Are There More of You? Written and performed by Alison Skilbeck

Described by playwright Alan Ayckbourn as "brilliantly observed, richly comic characters, all played to painful perfection, a wonderful evening'", Are There More of You? is a tale of four women, living utterly different lives, linked, it seems, only by a postcode, though all on the 'verge of a nervous breakthrough'. First there is CLAIRE, bright, abandoned Ambassador's wife, with blood on her hands; Italian SOPHIA, serving egg 'n' chips by day and osso bucco and Verdi by night, while upstairs Mamma seems set to last forever; SARA, the local Spirit Weaver, all sweetness and light, unless you tangle with her; and SAM, bluff northern business woman, who's always got on with men, but seems to be going home alone.

The late great Alan Plater described 'Are There More of You?' as "a lovely piece of work: four diverse, original characters, telling their highly original stories. Funny, painful, and surreal - very like life." Skilbeck's enormously varied stage career has taken her to the West End and all over the UK, and on tour to the USA and Europe: early on she created roles in no fewer than six Ayckbourn premieres at Scarborough. On radio she was 'Polly Perks' in the Archers until the character's tragic death; while television credits include Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, The Beiderbecke Affair, Soldier Soldier, Head Over Heels, Dr Who, New Tricks, Law and Order UK, and Midsomer Murders. She is an Associate Teacher at RADA specialising in Shakespeare and serving on the Admissions Panel.
"Go see how character comedy acting is done! " Miranda Hart

"... the script and performance that brings these four women to vivid life are sharply funny, often poignant and always engaging" Oxford Times

Tickets €12/€10

Wednesday 8th May @ 12pm - Bealtaine Film Festival Tour

The Sapphires

Cast: Chris O'Dowd, Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens, Miranda Tapsell

Inspired by a true story, The Sapphires follows four vivacious, young and talented Australian Aboriginal girls from a remote mission as they learn about love, friendship and war when their all-girl group The Sapphires entertains the U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968.

In association with Access Cinema and the Irish Film Institute

Tickets €3

Sunday 19th May @ 8pm

Friars’ Gate Youth Theatre present The Crucible by Arthur Millar adapted by Lisa O’Connor.

In a small country village where witchcraft has taken over, a group of young girls seemingly have the power. With a drunk reverend, greedy landowners and argumentative couples, can anyone escape the wrath of satins work or can any truth be uncovered?

Tickets €10/€5

Monday 20th & Tuesday 21st May @ 7.30pm

Friars’ Gate Children’s Drama Group present The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins. Director Maria O’Neill.

Tickets €5

Thursday 23rd May @ 8pm

Torch Players, Limerick present I Do not Like Thee, Dr. Fell by Bernard Farrell.

A hilarious and satirical send up of American group therapy, a group of people gather in a sealed room for an Encounter group session under the direction of an American group therapist. One of the group, a young man, displays increasingly disturbing behaviour. The others react around this central figure in a defensive and ruthless manner, which is hilarious and gripping at the same time. Cast: Mary Harvey, Ollie Hayes, Peter Hayes, Pat Kelly, Joanne O’Brien, Jeanne O’Connor, Micheal O’Dubhghaill. Directed by Maurice O’Sullivan.

Tickets €15/€12

Friday 7th June @ 8pm

Annmarie O’Riordan
Already establishing a truly distinctive and increasingly popular singing style in the world of traditional Irish music Annmarie hails from the Rathcoole area near Millstreet, Co. Cork. She was chosen as the nation’s Best Newcomer Horizon Award winner at the highly prestigious Irish Music Awards announced at the World Fleadh held in the Royal Theatre, Castlebar in 2009. Dolores Keane is her main source of inspiration and, clearly, their singing styles are not dissimilar. Her CD is featured almost weekly on Donncha Ó Dúlaing’s radio programme Failte Isteach.
Tickets €15/€12

Saturday 15th June @ 3pm

Miriam Lambert Puppeteer presents Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Miriam Lambert, from the well-known Lambert family of puppeteers, brings this classic tale to life with her unique style of puppetry. Peek and Boo -her signature characters- open the performance, using their international language of movement and slapstick comedy to guide the children to the tale of a little girl who pays a visit to the home of the adorable baby bear!
Devised, written and performed by Miriam Lambert, this gentle, captivating performance takes place within her original two-tier puppet booth, from where the magic, experienced by young and old, never fades.
Tickets €6

Wednesday 19th June @ 8pm

Film - Dreamtime Revisited

Dreamtime, Revisited is a "walkabout in dreamtime Ireland" inspired by the works of Irish writer, poet and philosopher; John Moriarty (1938–2007). Dreamtime, Revisited weaves together contemporary and archive material, with excerpts from some of Moriarty’s key talks, in a labyrinthine invocation of what he called his "dream-vision" of Ireland. The film mirrors Moriarty’s gaze upon the face of contemporary and historical Ireland and explores the spiritual and poetic dimensions of its people and landscape weaving a rich tapestry of sound and image. The film will be introduced by its director, Dónal Ó Céilleachair

‘…a transcendentally beautiful film. . . a technical triumph’Irish Times

'A magical, hallucinatory feast of wonders. I emerged from the cinema spellbound and soul-bathed'

Mike Scott (The Waterboys)

Tickets €6

Wednesday 26th - Sunday 30th June @ 8pm

Friars’ Gate Theatre presents Sharon’s Grave by John B. Keane

Keane's play about the struggle between the forces of good and evil and the mythical beliefs of 1930’s rural Ireland deals with a man’s ruthless lust for land, which overrides all family loyalties, and can ultimately lead to tragedy.

Directed by Robert Lee, Sharon’s Grave is at its simplest a love story - revolving around Trassie, her ‘touched’ brother Neelus and Peader, the thatcher who comes to patch up their lives in a number of ways. But the play cannot help but focus on Dinzie, a cripple whose mind is every bit as broken as his body, and who wishes no man well.

Tickets: €15 / €12

Summer Camps

Arts & Crafts with Jane Howe   Monday 15th – Friday 16th July

Drama Camp with Maria O’Neill    Monday 1st – Friday 5th July
Monday 29th July – Friday 2nd August
Fee €60

Footsteps Youth Theatre
Actively Retired Drama Programme
Transition Year Drama Studies Programme
National School Drama Awareness Programme
Shoulder to Shoulder Integration Programme
Contact Friars’ Gate for details.