Theatre Lineup Revealed For Clonmel Junction Festival

Theatre is at the heart of the 2023 Clonmel Junction Festival, happening July 1st – 9th, with a mixture of new creations, and old favourites, delighting the theatre audience that the festival has built up over the years. With two site-specific shows, a range of work at the Junction Dome on Clonmel's new Civic Plaza, and work for young audiences, there really is something for everyone.

Hucklebuck is a show that Clonmel Junction Festival have wanted to make for a number of years. Clonmel has a very long and proud showband tradition – continued today with fantastic function bands like the nationally-renowned Pearly Whites, and they had the idea of telling a story against the backdrop of live music and dancing. With a live-streamed version of the story from the 1950s, Collins Hall, happening in 2021, Hucklebuck is the live-action sequel, playing in a transformed auditorium that doubles as the set, and the play taking place in the heart of the audience.

 “We'll have a band on stage, a troupe of dancers to entertain (and join), and our two fantastic actors, Meadhbh Maxwell and Eanna Grogan, telling director/writer Jack Reardon's story of young love at the dancehall in 1969. The set that Jack Scullion has designed is gorgeous – I'm looking forward to the wow factor that we'll get when people walk in the door. We've been really lucky with the dancers that choreographer Ciara Laste will be leading, and James O'Donovan is writing arrangements that will give the show its soundtrack” says Junction Artistic Director Cliona Maher “Creating work by, for, and with, Clonmel artists is a key part of our current artistic mission, and we want the festival to be one that theatre fans travel to for some original work, as well as giving local audiences a show created for them.”

BrokenCrow's show FOUND has also been a number of years in the making and Clonmel Junction are happy to be part of getting it made. Writer/performer Aideen Wylde has a long history with the festival, and when she approached Cliona Maher about being part of the team co-producing the play, it seemed a perfect fit. Inspired by writer and performer Aideen Wylde's deep connection to the province of Newfoundland, Canada—her 'backwards genealogy'—FOUND is a wild, and weirdly wonderful mishmash of traditions, from here and there, that make the Irish of both places 'a people divided by time.' Mulcahy's Bar have provided a space for the group to rehearse as well as perform, and audiences will be transported to the special and magical world of the play.

The Junction Festival Dome is in its best location yet for its 3rd year at the festival, and its position at the heart of the new Civic Plaza makes it the hub of theatre work for the festival. With national and international work sharing a stage with talented local writers and performers, it's a true celebration of touring theatre – the founding aim of the festival back in 2001. Festival favourites Fishamble Theatre Co are back with Pat Kinevane's new play, King, which tells of Luther, a man from Cork named in honour of his Granny Bee Baw's hero, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Luther only leaves his apartment for essential journeys, and to perform as an Elvis impersonator. The play explores prejudice, privilege, and resilience, as Luther struggles to live life to the full. Pat Kinevane previously performed in the Dome with a live-streamed performance of Before in 2021, so the festival and company are delighted to come back together for what is sure to be a packed auditorium for King. CallBack Theatre first visited the festival over 10 years ago with Fred & Alice and this year the play is back in a new staging. Starring Ciaran Bermingham, who Clonmel audiences will remember from his performance in 2022's supermarket show, Everything Must GO!, this is a quirky love story about 2 amazing mischievous characters who meet in a home. From their days in care, to independent living, Fred and Alice negotiate the perils and pitfalls of life and love. Together they create a fantastical world which spills over into a madcap reality when they decide to move in together. Tipperary writer Aine Ryan brings her new staging of Kitty in the Lane direct from its triumphant performance in London. A beautifully written one-woman show is a dark but frequently funny tale of grief, isolation and trauma which takes the audience through a tale of laughs and horror with a final twist that packs a punch. 

Clonmel Junction Arts Festival is dedicated to kids on weekend two, and the Dome welcomes Ouch Productions and their show The Lonesome Boatman. Created for close collaborators Cairde Sligo Festival, the piece then travels south to bring some theatre magic to younger audiences and which is a Circus Musical Odyssey where a man gets in his bath and sails away on the rising tide to adventure the unknown.

On the Plaza, audiences will have an unusual and festival-friendly show-in-a-box Without Sin, an immersive experience for an audience of two, created by Unqualified Design Studio, an award-winning team of designers and theatre-makers, described by its makers as 'a contemporary confessional for the modern sinner.'

Stagecraft Youth Theatre have been invited to revive their 2022 production of Pricked, a coming of age story which follows a group of friends the night of their debs. As we jump between the night of and the morning after, the truth is slowly revealed. Pricked was devised with young people, in conjunction with Tipperary Rape Crisis Centre responding to a new wave of Tik Tok videos which warned young people of a new form of spiking via injection.

An important part of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival's work is in supporting artists to develop work and there will be a series of plays that are in development getting lunchtime rehearsed readings to give audiences a taste of what's to come, with a chance to give feedback to artists. With new work from Eve O'Mahony, Ciara Elizabeth Smyth, Aine Ryan and Aoife Ryan, as well as a new musical two-hander by festival alumni Riain Cash (currently rehearsing for the Gate Theatre's Fun House) and Ciara Laste, this is an important part of the theatre programme for the festival, which strives to support theatre production in regional Ireland.

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