The ribbon was cut and the tour declared on. Now, to the pumps with the cast and company of Storytellers theatre company with their production The Star-child and Other Stories.
Joan Bergin, the award-winning costume designer, was there to launch the tour. The celebrated designer - just back from the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles where she was a nominee - launched Storytellers Nationwide, which will visit 11 venues in 11 weeks, presented in association with Cork Opera House.
Bergin is currently working in Dublin and Wicklow on a Pierce Brosnan film, which is set in 1953. It's based on the true story of Desmond Doyle, who fought in the courts for three years to get his children back from the State. "It changed the Irish Constitution," she said.
She wished the Storytellers well and said she hoped young people would go along to discover "a sense of just how magical theatre can be".
Kathy Kissik, an eminent Boston-born artist, whose work earlier this year eerily evoked the Twin Towers atrocities in New York city, was present. Transposing aerial images of the city on to large pieces of aircraft wreckage. One of her giant-sized pieces, created before September 11th, features 84 angels hanging from the wreckage of an aircraft covered with images of the city skyline. From there to writer Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, who has adapted three of Oscar Wilde's stories for the stage. She explained how the stories are told: "A group of animals who are stranded in a forest at night tell stories to pass the time and keep from eating each other".