Portumna Players

The Portumna Players came into existence in 1945. Gerry Darcy, Eamon Hayes, Des and Aileen Murphy were the founding members. The reason for the society’s birth was to raise funds for the Portumna Lawn and Table Tennis Club. Their first production in 1945 was, ‘Paul Twyning’ by George Shiel. So encouraged were they by the success of the play that the Portumna Drama Group were formed. Subsequently a constitution was drawn up. The two objectives were to promote the dramatic arts and to build a Little Theatre. They have succeeded in staging 72 productions in the past 75 years. On the inception of Heritage Day 1996 a pageant was performed at Portumna Castle. This was a result of obtaining two letters written in 1924 by a local man and a collaboration with Harry Smith. The following year a re-enactment of the marriage of Patrick Sarsfield and Hanora de Burgo was performed. Portumna Players have many achievements to date. In 1949 they competed at Scarriff Drama Festival with ‘Drama at Inish’ by Lennox Robinson. They got second place. The adjudicator was the author, who told the cast afterwards that he could not award his own play first place. Subsequently successes at festivals included three awards at Scarriff, one at Limerick one at Ballinrobe. They had the distinction of winning the first rural All-Ireland festival at Athlone in 1953 with Siggerson Cliffords ‘Nano’. In 2000, they visited Rhode Island, USA together with the Maple Poetry Group and presented ‘Sharon’s Grave’ in The Prout School Wakefield.