History

Stage Craft Youth Theatre was founded in 1998 by current Artistic Director Shane Dempsey. Over the last nine years our membership has steadily grown to its current figure of 150 young people from the ages of 7 to 20 years. This makes us one of the largest youth theatre's of our kind in Ireland. To date we have produced over 30 full-scale theatre productions (7 of which have been Irish Premiers) and have run over 2000 workshops and rehearsals. Stage Craft is affiliated to The National Association for Youth Drama (NAYD) who are the development organisation responsible for youth theatre/drama in Ireland.

Stage Craft aims to provide the highest standards of professional theatre training for young people. As well as providing workshops in all aspects of theatre practise we continue to produce at present a minimum of 5 theatre productions per year. These productions allow the members an ideal opportunity to apply the skills they have acquired in our workshops to an exciting theatre production. Our artistic policy has and continues to support the development of new writers and has commissioned such notable writers such as Hannah Burke, Jim Daly and Sam Greene. These artists since working for us have continued to make a significant contribution to the new writing for theatre and radio.

Stage Craft has an honourable tradition of older members returning to share their skills with less experienced younger members. Our current staff directors are ex-members Keith Greene and Lisa O Brien who will be directing all of the current seasons work. Guest work-shop leaders include Helen Flynn, Alan Fogarty, and internationally renowned playwright and actor George B Seremba.