They've come up from the foothills of Sliabh na mBan to stage a production of Yerma, a play by Frederico Garcia Lorca. The Galloglass Theatre Company kicked off its spring tour 2000 in Andrews Lane Theatre this week. After its Dublin run it will go further afield. It will go to Wales later, says Bernice Turner, of Pact @ Temple Bar, which is part-funding the trip.
Theresia Guschlbauer, artistic director of the company, and her partner, company manager, David Teevan, wait to welcome opening night guests. As they pose for the camera, the Austrian woman who met Teevan in New York in the 1980s, asks how their three children are doing. "We haven't seen each other in five days," she explains, such is theatre life.
Actor Eunice McMenamin, formerly Fidelma in Glenroe, is waiting for her friend Cathy Belton, another actor, who plays Lucy the vet in the same soap. In another corner, the talk is of the recent wrap party to mark the end of filming An Ever-Lasting Piece, which tells the story of how a pair of wig salesmen in Belfast fared in the 1970s. All the guests to that particular party wore wigs, it seems.
Peter Sheridan, director and brother of the slightly more famous Jim, has arrived with Pat Moylan, owner of the theatre; they are both taking a break from the editing suite where they're working on Borstal Boy. They won't say who's going to end up on the cutting room floor. "My head could," says Sheridan.
Rossa O Snodaigh, of the group Kila, has come along for the opening. Breathless, he says their new album, Lemonade and Buns, is being launched this week. A very shy actor, Aidan Gillen, brother of tonight's lead, Fionnuala Murphy, comes in too. (He plays one of the key characters in Some Mother's Son.) Star quality surely - we nearly have to pin him down to get a picture. A friend, Paraic Cullen, a writer (or did he say waiter?), obliges by posing for the shot also.