Phoenix Players

Phoenix Players Drama Group was founded in Tubbercurry in 1945 by Paddy Murray and Sean O'Dowd, who first gathered a company of amateur players at the local Vocational School. The group rose from the ashes of the older, by-then defunct Tubbercurry Players — the new name written for the phoenix of the legend.

The first production was The Golden Priest, staged in 1945, and the following year it won the Confined Cup at the 1946 Western Drama Festival — the first of many trophies that would come home to St. Brigid's Hall in the decades that followed.

Through the second half of the twentieth century and into the present, the group has staged three-act drama, one-act competition pieces and full musicals — moving from town hall productions in the late 1940s to packed-house weeklong runs in the present. The repertoire has ranged from Brian Friel and Sam Shepard to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Today, Phoenix Players continues to perform at St. Brigid's Hall, Tubbercurry, and remains an active participant in the Western Drama Festival.

The Phoenix Players are among the founding groups of the Western Drama Festival, held annually in Tubbercurry. The festival is one of the longest-running on the Irish amateur drama circuit and a key fixture of the calendar both for the town and for the visiting companies who travel each year to take part.

For information on this year's festival programme and tickets, see local listings closer to the date.