Katie to per format High Achievers concert

Eighteen year-old local secondary student Katie Dalton (pictured) has been selected to take part in the Royal Irish Academy of Music’s gala Concert for high achievers. Katie earned the honour to represent the Leinster region at the Academy’s Awards Ceremony that will take place in Athlone on November 20.

Katie who is from the village attends Saint Vincent’s Secondary School in Dundalk and is due to sit her Leaving Certificate examination next June.

Her selection followed her receiving the highest marks in her final grade examination with the Royal Irish Academy and subsequently successfully auditioning in Dublin for the Awards Ceremony.

She will perform ‘I Ate the Divorce Papers,’ Goodbye Charles’ by Gabriel Davis and will then receive her award.

She hopes after her Leaving Certificate to go on to NUI Galway. It’s always been her wish to end up there and study science to pursue possibly a career in research and development of new medicine.

‘Speech and Drama has always been a big part of my life and I’m sure that in my future I will be involved in some aspect of it. In May of this year, I graduated from Reynolds Academy of Performing Arts (R.A.P.A.). ‘

The Academy founded and run by Patricia Reynolds is a Speech and Drama school.

Katie attended the academy for 13 years. ‘I have done speech and drama for as long as I can remember. So you can imagine it was strange not going back at the start of this academic year. However I still am in contact with Patricia who has been like a second mother to me and to many of her other students. I am also still great friends with many of my fellow graduates.’

‘I began drama at a very young age, as my two older sisters went and so my parents thought I might enjoy it too, and they were right. Over the years I’ve taken part in many of the annual Feiseanna Dhun Dealgain which will be celebrating 20 years this January, and of which I have very fond memories.

Apart from the Feis, we were also examined by the Royal Irish Academy of Drama, and I completed the final grade 8 exam earlier this year. Patricia has also held two musical shows; ‘The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents’, and ‘Ali Baba and His Fourty Thieves’, both of which I have taken part in and which I found to be a great experience for all of us.’

The piece she will perform at the awards ceremony is taken from the author’s play ‘Goodbye Charles’, in which a lady is speaking to her soonto-be ex-husband; a decision that is not her own. It is a comical piece. She is erratic and flustered as she speaks to her husband in a light hearted way. However we then see her underlying pain. She uses conflicting humour to mask her suffering that separation brings with it.