The Clonbanin Ambush Play

My name is Steven O’ Riordan. I am director and producer for both theatre and film. I’m setting up this campaign as I would like to raise funds to help me complete a newly discovered but unfinished play that has been found in an attic twenty –five years after the writer’s death.

I was given this play a few years ago by the writer’s family and over time it has slowly taken such a grip on my imagination that the time is now right to do justice to the playwright and bring this “lost” exciting piece of theatre to life.

The Clonbanin Ambush was written by Cork native Bill Cody, also known as Patrick Vaughan contributor to the Corkman and the initial seeds for this play were sown almost 70 years ago through his encounter with an IRA veteran. It examines the circumstances surrounding a famous IRA ambush of the War of Independence where a large party of Volunteers from Cork and Kerry ambushed a party of British army soldiers in 1921 resulting in the death of the decorated British Brigadier-General Hanway Robert Cumming. 

Discovered among Bill’s papers were two copybooks of fascinating historical, dramatic and poetic material dealing with the ambush that lay incomplete at the time of Bill’s death. In this time of seismic Irish revolutionary centenaries the play deserves and demands to be finished to do justice not just to the playwright but to the men who fought and died that day at Clonbanin.

My main body of work constitutes two critically acclaimed documentaries, No Limbs No Limits and the Forgotten Maggies. I have teamed up with award winning playwright Conall Quinn who specialises in historical drama. He received the 2009 Stewart Parker Trust Award for his play The Death of Harry Leon, and has written other critically well-received plays. I want to try and give Bill Cody his place, his due, in Irish theatre history. I am hoping you can help me to raise the funds needed.

“The evening sun was sinking low and red was all the west / eve’s night dark curtains laid their folds upon a land at rest…Twas there I saw a wayside cross outlined against the sod / I traced it there its outline square, the rude stark cross of God / I wondered at its presence there within that pleasant dell / when along the winding highway a veteran’s shadow fell… Yes son I’ll tell you the story just as it should be told…” Bill Cody.

€10,000 would allow both Conall and I to work on this play and bring it to fruition. Your support is gratefully appreciated and I sincerely hope you see the merit in this project.