Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

The 2023 RT All-Ireland Drama Festival Launches at Dublin's Abbey Theatre

21/04/2023

The 2023 RT All-Ireland Drama Festival

Launches at Dublin's Abbey Theatre

Drama groups from around the country gathered today at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, for the launch of the 2023 RT All Ireland Drama Festival, under the auspices of the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland.

Starting on Thursday, 27 April, and running until Friday 5 May, drama festivals from across the island of Ireland will compete in the All-Ireland deciders, with the presentation of the final awards on Saturday May 6.

Festival Director, Regina Bushell, said: This is a very special year for the festival as the ADCI, founded in Athlone in 1953, is celebrating its 70th Anniversary. Fittingly, the standard of the plays this year is truly very high, and expectation is building as our groups prepare to perform under the watchful eye of this year's adjudicator Paula Dempsey. And this year we have the premiere of a brand-new Irish play written by one of the group members, as well as two amateur premieres.

Dee Forbes, Director-General, RT , said: With the RT All Ireland Drama Festival, RT is proud to foster creativity and acting talent through drama, and to bring the excitement and tension of this unique festival to audiences all over Ireland, through the partnership with RT lyric fm, through RT .ie and our social channels, and through RT Radio 1. We are delighted this year to produce yet another ambitious radio and television campaign that gets to the heart of what make this festival so enduring: the power of drama, of the individual, and of the collective, and the resilience to start again. The spotlight is on Athlone during May, and we will be there .

The festival also revealed a revamped website at http://www.dramafestival.ie. The official draw for the line-up for the 2023 RT All Ireland Drama Festival took place on Monday 10 April.

The 2023 festival sees the return of last year's winners, Ballyduff Drama Group, presenting an exciting Irish premiere of The Welkin' by Lucy Kirkwood, while former winners Newpoint Players will present Happy Days' by Samuel Beckett. Dundalk Theatre Workshop will perform Brian Friel's masterpiece Faith Healer', and Thurles Drama Group will present Conor MacPherson's play, 'The Seafarer'. Former winners Dalkey Players are presenting By the Bog of Cats', Marina Carr's play. And the festival will also welcome back former double winners, Prosperous Dramatic Society. Prosperous are performing the amateur premiere of Oleanna by David Mamet. Back too are Wexford Drama Group with the amateur premiere of the winner of the 2014 Moli re Award for Best Play, Florian Zeller's The Father , alongside Ballyshannon Drama Society with their production of the Pulitzer Prize winning, A Delicate Balance' by Edward Albee. Butt Drama Circle will return with another premiere, a new three hander Irish play Darkness Echoing' written by Butt Drama member Shaun Byrne, following on from the success of last year's An Incident with Dave Cotter'.

This year's adjudicator Paula Dempsey, is an actor, director and drama adjudicator and holds an MA in Modern Drama Studies from University College Dublin. She has been adjudicating since 2007 and is a member of the Association of Theatre Adjudicators.

Tickets are now on sale and can be booked through the Dean Crowe website at http://www.deancrowetheatre.com/ or at the theatre box office, phone (090) 6492129. Admission 20 (includes a 1 Booking Fee). Concessions are available.

The Athlone Festival will also have a packed programme of fringe events, including fringe highlights the Annual Schools Playwright competition and the Athlone Film Festival. Now in its 10th year the playwright competition attracted entries from TY students from 12 counties. Sponsored again by Athlone Credit Union the awards ceremony takes place on 25 April. Further details are available on our website and social media.
LINK: https://about.rte.ie/2023/04/21/the-2023-rte-all-ireland-drama-festiva...
See more stories from rte

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

29/06/2026

Op-Ed: Why the 2026 World Cup Is Redefining the Economics of Live Sports Production

By Andy Rayner, CTO, Appear The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest football tou...

29/06/2026

Study: Esports Plays Major Role in Gen Z Media Habits, Purchasing Behavior

A new multi-country study from ESL FACEIT Group, Hero Esports, and Niko Partners estimates that 400 million Gen Z consumers regularly engage with esports, under...

29/06/2026

ESPN Sets Multiplatform Plans for America 250 Celebration

ESPN will mark America's 250th anniversary with a series of content initiatives across its linear, digital, and streaming platforms, including a special edi...

29/06/2026

OBSBOT Named Official Camera and Webcam Partner of Esports World Cup 2026

The Esports Foundation has named OBSBOT the Official Camera and Webcam Partner for the Esports World Cup 2026, bringing the company's AI-powered imaging tec...

29/06/2026

Insight Productions Launches Insight Storm, 53-Foot Esports Broadcast Truck

Insight Productions has launched Insight Storm, a 53-foot mobile broadcast unit designed specifically for esports production, live entertainment, and digital-fi...

29/06/2026

Gravity Media Delivers Global Distribution, Streaming Services for World Economic Forum in Dalian

Gravity Media once again provided broadcast, streaming, and content-distribution...

29/06/2026

Wimbledon Introduces AI-Powered Fan Features, Modernized Digital Platforms for 2026 Championships

The All England Lawn Tennis Club and IBM have introduced new and enhanced digita...

29/06/2026

Evolve Dark Matter from Excite Audio

Four-layer instrument aimed at dark electronic music Excite Audio's latest software instrument has been designed with dark drum and bass, atmospheric te...

29/06/2026

Tracktion unleashes Waveform 14 DAW

New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...

29/06/2026

Focusrite publish 2026 Sustainability Report

Details environmental policies & results The Focusrite Group have just announced that following a long audit process, they have published their 2026 sustain...

29/06/2026

Comcast to Spin Off NBCUniversal, Sky

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/06/2026

Supreme Court Rules Trump Can Fire FTC Commissioner Without Cause

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/06/2026

CVP Launches Warranty plus to Protect Professional Equipm...

CVP, one of Europes leading suppliers of professional video and broadcast solutions, has announced the launch of CVP Warranty , a new extended warranty programm...

29/06/2026

TitanTV Hires Mark Hadley as Technology Specialist

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/06/2026

Fox Sports Delivers Another FIFA Mens World Cup Audience Record

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/06/2026

Arvato Systems Achieves AWS Cloud Operations Competency

Arvato Systems Achieves AWS Cloud Operations Competency The team behind the AWS Cloud Operations Competency (from left to right: Philipp Hellmich, Johanna Bod...

29/06/2026

Ger Gilroy to join RT to present a Daily Sports Podcast

RT today announced that Ger Gilroy will join the RT Podcasts team to present a daily sports podcast. Launching later this year, the new show will set the spor...

29/06/2026

OUTsurance announced as sponsors of Oliver Callan on RT Radio 1

RT Commercial announced OUTsurance as sponsor of the Oliver Callan show on RT Radio 1 from Wednesday 1 July. Oliver Callan doubles the fun, delivering two ...

29/06/2026

Open Models, Closed Environments: Palantir Brings Secure AI to US Agencies With NVIDIA Nemotron

Showcasing the importance of open source innovation in American AI, Palantir'...

28/06/2026

Softube unveil lower cost Console 1 Compact

Half-size model joins Console 1 line-up Shortly after the release of their new Flow Studio controller, Softube have announced the launch of another new surf...

28/06/2026

EVE Audio introduce EVE Origin

New EXO Series DSP control software announced EVE Audio's EXO Series monitor range has just gained a new software element that provides remote access to...

28/06/2026

Freedman Labs Releases PrepMyMedia and ViewMyAttic for Post Production Professionals - 50% off for COWs!

Freedman Labs Releases PrepMyMedia and ViewMyAttic for Post Production Professio...

27/06/2026

Through Their Lens: What Cinematographer Amy Vincent Saw at the 2026 Directors Lab

There's no doubt that you've seen the world through Amy Vincent's ey...

27/06/2026

UJAM release Retrocraft

Brings together saturation & lo-fi effects Following on from the release of their Voxcraft vocal-processing plug-in, UJAM have announced the launch of Retro...

27/06/2026

A record 4.84 million Australians choose SBS as the Socceroos advance at FIFA World Cup 2026

A record 4.84 million Australians choose SBS as the Socceroos advance at FIFA Wo...

27/06/2026

Apogee CRAS Symphony Mkii Education Feature Blog

Why CRAS Upgraded to Symphony I/O MK II When an audio school runs studios all day, every day, gear doesn't just need to sound good , it needs to survive rea...

27/06/2026

MultiDyne Acquires the Assets of MRMC

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

27/06/2026

Spectrum Intelligence Ventures Launches Latis

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

27/06/2026

Krotos Video to Sound Plugin Now Available for Adobe Premiere Pro

Krotos Video to Sound Plugin Now Available for Adobe Premiere Pro Brie Clayton June 26, 2026 0 Comments Editors can analyze footage, generate synchron...

27/06/2026

Mirai Media Elevates Digital and Broadcast Productions with Blackmagic Design

Mirai Media Elevates Digital and Broadcast Productions with Blackmagic Design Brie Clayton June 26, 2026 0 Comments Studio uses Ultimatte 12 HD and Po...

27/06/2026

Lutra Cafe & Bakery Opens At American Tobacco Campus

DURHAM, N.C. - JUNE 26, 2026 - Lutra Cafe & Bakery has opened its first brick-and-mortar location at American Tobacco Campus after owner Chris McLaurin operated...

26/06/2026

SVG GameDay, Ep. 21: Minnesota Vikings Allan Wertheimer - Large-Scale Shows in Minny

In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...

26/06/2026

Strike Fighter League Announces Second Online Tournament, Set for July 25 in Las Vegas

Strike Fighter League (SFL), a professional air combat digital sport combining f...

26/06/2026

InfoComm 2026: Wisycom Announces MPR60 Firmware Update, MATF Antenna Matrix, and PFL RFoF Box

Wisycom has announced three new additions to its professional wireless ecosystem...

26/06/2026

Eurovision Services Inaugurates Expanded Master Control Room in Madrid

Eurovision Services inaugurated an expanded Master Control Room (MCR) in Madrid on June 1, 2026, building on a broadcast hub the company has operated in the cit...

26/06/2026

Midco Sports and University of North Dakota Renew Broadcast and Sponsorship Partnership

Midco Sports and the University of North Dakota (UND) have announced a two-year ...

26/06/2026

G&D and VuWall Appoint Vutec as Exclusive South Africa Distributor

Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall, both part of the Panoptec Technologies Group, have appointed Vutec (Pty) Ltd as exclusive distributor for their KVM and ...

26/06/2026

Visit Seattle Launches Drone Scoreboard at Space Needle for FIFA World Cup 2026

Visit Seattle, the official destination marketing organization for Seattle and King County, has launched what it describes as the world's first drone scoreb...

26/06/2026

CP Communications Provides RF and Wireless Support for 2026 NBA Draft at Barclays Center

CP Communications provided RF video, audio, and crew communications support for ...

26/06/2026

Reimagined MoonPay X Games League Kicks Off With Three-Day Event in Sacramento

Produced by longtime partner Echo Entertainment, the action-sports property is now a team-based year-round league The inaugural season of the MoonPay X Games L...

26/06/2026

MultiDyne Acquires MRMC, Expands into Camera Robotics and Motion Control

The deal establishes MultiDyne Robotics and Motion Control, maintaining the well-known MRMC brand.MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic Systems has acquired the assets ...

26/06/2026

TNT Sports Heads Into Year 2 of NASCAR Return With New NEP Truck, Expanded In-Car Experience

PX1 will debut at Sonoma as TNT leans into super-slo-mo, drones, SMT data integr...

26/06/2026

Ratings Roundup: USMNT-Australia Draws 23M Viewers; Mexico-South Korea Is Most-Watched Spanish-Language Soccer Match Ever

Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...

26/06/2026

David Kuckhermann brings calabash to Celemony Tonalic

Virtual session musician plug-in gains new percussion options Celemony's latest update for their virtual session musician platform complements the exist...

26/06/2026

Softube unveil the Console 1 Compact

Half-size model joins Console 1 line-up Shortly after the release of their new Flow Studio controller, Softube have announced the launch of another new surf...

26/06/2026

ELT Group and Rohde & Schwarz sign a cooperation agreement to explore commercial opportunities in electromagnetic warfare and defense

ELT Group and Rohde & Schwarz sign a cooperation agreement to explore commercial...