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The Newry drama festival is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year and in order to commemorate that I sat down with Eileen Mooney and talked to her about her role in the festival, what makes the festival work behind the scenes and what challenges the festival has faced throughout the years.
“Currently I’m Vice Chair at the moment so I would stand in if necessary for the Chairman” Eileen didn’t start out as Vice Chair for the festival, she originally began as a secretary “ I was secretary from 1976 until 2019, as secretary the first thing you would have done in those early days was you would have had a syllabus, which was a lengthy list of rules about the drama festival and it have had rules and addresses of drama groups right across north, south, east west and you would send that syllabus with a letter giving them the dates of the festival and asking them would they like to enter Newry Drama Festival”
“During that time there was always difficulty choosing the groups, we thought first of all about our audience, what plays would our audience like to see. You also looked at standard as well because you knew the groups that were good and you tried to get a mixture of groups that were very, very high standard and also groups who have been loyal to the festival in the past”.
Over the 70 years the way in which the drama festival works has changed greatly. “There was a lot of correspondence, those days it was done by letter so I would have been constantly at the post office sending parcels backwards and forwards, they would have sent the scripts to me and when I had all the scripts, I would have posted the scripts to the adjudicator.” Something else that changed over the years is the way in which the plays themselves were made, “Probably what has changed is the standard of lighting and sets has become much, much better”.
Eileen also talked about the many challenges that the drama festival has faced over the past few years especially after COVID forced everyone into lockdown “the challenge presently is getting audiences back and that’s why we’re trying to sell this year out on social media.”
“One of the big things we’ve done is we’ve gone down to six nights as opposed to nine, the reason for that really is because when you booked the town hall over the weekend they’re paying the staff overtime, so that became a bit of a problem “
On top of the difficulty the festival has had in getting their customers to return after COVID it is noticeable that there has been a slow decline in people attending the festival “One of the problems we have had is its difficult to get young people to come” “I think in the 80’s we would have had packed houses, there were nights you would have been turning people away. I remember one year we put in extra seats, now you wouldn’t be allowed to do that because of health and safety”.
Newry Drama Festival is sponsored by many local business’ throughout Newry “We’re very grateful for the sponsorship we get from the local firms and the local shops, every year it’s the same firms and the same shops that come out and they are wonderful in the amount of money they are willing to give us and the help they give, and we couldn’t really exist without that sponsorship”.
There is a list of plays being held at the festival this year starting from March 18th with Alone It Stands by the Balally players, then on March 19th there is The Passing Day by the Slemish Players, after that there is Gaslight by the Clarence players on March 20th and then on March 21st the festival is showing In The Shadow Of The Glen; Re-imagined by the Newpoint Players, there is also The Ferryman by the Ballyduff Drama Group on the 22nd of March and finally there is Radium Girls by the Clontarf Players on March 23rd.
Newry Drama Festival takes place from March 18th to the 23rd in Newry Town Hall and tickets can be bought in the Canal Court Hotel in Newry on Saturday March 9th from 10am to 12pm.
