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Newpoint Players in Newry are busy preparing for their 2023 summer show with a performance planned for the end of this month. This year they are working on a play based around female orphans from Newry Workhouse who went to Australia during the great hunger.
Donal O'Hanlon, Newpoint Players explained "We've got 25 children in here aged from 14 to 18. They are here four hours a day, five days a week for seven weeks, which will culminate in the performance of a play that has been specially written for them about Newry Workhouse orphans, who were more or less sent to Australia as 'breeding material' in the middle of the famine."
It has been a difficult year for Newpoint who like other local groups thought at one point the annual event wouldn't happen through lack of funding, but thanks to a grant from the Newry Based Brian Conlon Foundation, all worked out in the end.
Donal continued "The funding we got for this show has come mainly from the Brian Conlon Foundation. They gave us £3,500, the Newry Lions very kindly give us £500 and the Movement for Good give us £1000 for this show. We are deliriously happy with the trust that people put in us to put that money to good use, and as you can see from these pictures it certainly has been. It starts on the first working day after the 12th Bank Holiday and goes on to the beginning of September."
This year the group are based at Sticky Fingers in Edward Street. "Sticky Fingers have opened their arms to us. We traditionally have been based in the Town Hall and the Art Centre that bears our great man's name Sean Hollywood. Unfortunately, at the time when we were booking places, no grants were available to us so Sticky Fingers welcomed us with open arms, when we were poor, impoverished children at that time." Donal added.
The current working titleof the production is 'Orphans' and there will be three performances finishing on 1 September.
