Waterford Youth Arts are very much in the creative news lately. Only recently Deirdre Dwyer, who came up through the ranks at WAY, was awarded the prestigious Patrick Murray Bursary, in memory of the Cork Theatre Designer who died in 2006. Deirdre will study at the Royal Welsh College Of Music And Drama. Andrew Macklin, another WAY member, was on stage in the National Theatre/Abbey production of Three Sisters and is making a debut in Fair City soon.

For the Imagine Festival WAY have the ambitious and creative plan for DIVERSIONS – a theatrical journey on a bus around Waterford where seven short plays or scenes will be enacted on the bus, as people come and go. Seven local writers have been engaged to write the scenes like Pat Daly, Noel Kelly, Patrick O’Sullivan, Conor Nolan, Edward Denniston, Robert Browne and the young man of the moment – Adam Wallace.

I gotr the opportunity to see a working draft of Wallaces, The Safety Dance, and it is another example of how talented this young actor/writer is. His short play looks afresh at face-cream, cider, ice-cream, the pill, condoms, Moby Dick, Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween cuddles and the old naked monkey barn dance and Gonorrhea who doesn’t play for Chelsea.

Conor Nolan has Lady Macbeth meeting Shakespeare and that splendid actor Joe Meagher plays Lady Mac.

Ciara Dower, an upcoming director, will direct the Pat Daly play, The Random Act.

The event is sponsored by Kenneally’s Buses, Waterford City Services, part of the J. J. Kavanagh and Sons Group and will take place, Tuesday 26 to Thursday 30 October, twice nightly from the Arch, Barrack Street.