Congratulations to Amelia O’Donnell from Loreto College, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, who won the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival Schools Playwright Competition 2024, with her play ‘Gan Didean’
The RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival Schools Playwright Competition, which is in its 11th year, is open to Transition Year students to pen an original one-act play.
This year’s theme was ‘Home’ and had record entries from all over Ireland including Cork, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Meath, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath and Wexford.
The winning play, Gan Didean was performed live on stage at the renowned Dean Crowe Theatre in Athlone, the home of the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festiva, at yesterday’s prize-giving ceremony.
Speaking about her success in this year’s RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival Schools Playwright Competition to Barry Gallagher in an interview in News2Day on RTÉ2 today, Amelia said:
“This competition was a great opportunity to discuss what ‘home’ really means to us. A lot of people are without refuge, that’s the name of my play ‘Gan Didean’, who don’t feel that sense of home and belonging and I wanted to portray that in my play. Every single one of us has a story to tell and not everyone is given the chance to tell their story, so I wanted to act as a voice for them. Playwriting and any form of art is a great way of expression of activism and it’s through organisations and competitions like this that young people get their voice and it’s important to extend that to others”
Nine amateur drama groups will battle it out in this year’s RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival in the Dean Crowe Theatre, Athlone from this Thursday 2nd May to Friday 10th May.
Tickets are now on sale on the Dean Crowe website at http://www.deancrowetheatre.com/ and at the theatre box office, phone (090) 6492129. Admission €22. Concessions (€20) are available.
The RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival is held under the auspices of the Amateur Drama Council of Ireland.