Buddy Holly delivers for Pieta
A TOTAL of €15,000 was presented to Pieta House recently after the very successful run of the Buddy Holly Story.
The show which was the brainchild of Adrienne Murphy who decided to put on the show in aid of Pieta House having lost a cousin to suicide.
‘My cousin’s death was the motivation behind staging the show and I set about putting it on as an individual production. I produced the show myself and everyone really got on board. It took a while to get things in place but it was all worth it.
‘I was really lucky because a professional director from Waterford offered to direct it and Pat Murphy from Clonroche came on board as musical director. We were also very fortunate that actor Donnacha Cadogan who goes by Cado contacted us and auditioned for the role of Buddy and was superb.
‘With the exception of Buddy the rest of the cast were all from Wexford and we had Dave Cox and Paddy Davitt of Heartbeats, Pat Murphy who was also musical director, Paul Grace on drums and Cameron Cloke on bass.’
Adrienne who is a native of Bray has lived in Enniscorthy for the past 15 years said the cost of staging the show had already been met before the show started with the committee having run a number of fundraisers throughout the year.
‘We really wanted all the money raised from the six per- formances to go directly to Pieta House so the show was already fully funded before we started which was great. We were totally blown away by how much we raised. We had hoped to raise €10,000 but to get €15,000 was phenomenal. The community really supported us and we were sold out each night with waiting lists for tickets which was fantastic.’
Olive Ruane from Pieta House who accepted the cheque on behalf of the organisation said a new house, Pieta House Wexford, is now open at Francis Street in Wexford.
The house will have its official launch of October 18 and currently has three therapists and two support workers in situ there.
Pieta House Wexford isn’t a residential centre and operates an appointment only system. People who are presenting with suicide ideation contact the house and are given an appointment for assessment. Olive said that the most common course of action is a twice weekly appointment for twelve weeks to help the person in difficulty.
They also have a bereavement counsellor.