The Debs - the best drama a hotel can get

YOU CAN be guaranteed every Debs night around the country contains its fair share of tears, tension and intoxication.

Who to bring? What to wear? How to ensure your rented suit makes it home in one piece, are all part and parcel of the annual secondary school rites of passage shindig.

Next week, the drama and distress of the Debs night will be played out as part of the Diversions programme during the Imagine arts festival in Waterford, as the Waterford Youth Arts tackle the subject of The Debs with seven short plays directed by teenagers and acted by their peers (with the odd guest appearance by an adult). Each night all seven plays will be performed in a promenade-style, site-specific evening of theatre, set in local hotels, and hoping to bring to life the “pressure, fun and heartache of the Debs”.

Twenty-year-old Martina Collender, is co-ordinator of the Diversions project, and also directs two of the plays, Moving Forwardby Anita O'Keeffe, and Twistedby Richard Lippy Colin: "We have young people aged 15-19 who direct them most of them. It is about the debs, which every young person has experienced, but for our project the young people get to respond to it creatively. Some of the situations that emerged predictably, include getting drunk, as well as asking an ideal guy or girl out only for the evening to go horribly wrong." While much of the content is comical in nature, there is also a serious side.

Issues of peer pressure, bullying and the loss of innocence all make their way into the plays. One of the scenes has a couple from the 1950s and a couple from the present dancing side by side, and the changes in relation to their approach to relationships and emotional confidence is starkly presented.

Writer and novelist Mia Gallagher chose to take as the central character of her play, Fishy, a girl who is an outcast among her peer group because she is perceived as having poor personal hygiene.

In fact, she is teased and tormented by her classmates mainly because she smells like a fish (it’s all explained by the end). The idea for the play came from workshops Gallagher conducted with groups of students, and the writer say that the Debs night for some can be a highly pressurised occasion when youngsters feel they have to live up to the image of the body perfect.

“When I thought of the Debs, I thought of peer pressure and the fact it is beginning to become a lot like the proms. There is an idealised version of yourself and many young women are very insecure at that age. They can of course also be full of energy and taking great risks. The dress and the partner have to be perfect. At the end of the night the dress is usually a mess. It is like a weird deflowering that happens through the whole image of the dress disintegrating,” she says.

In her play, the central character with the off-putting odour wants to bring teen heart- throb Justin Bieber to her Debs and is further teased for her ambitions. “It deals with some serious issues, but, well, it has a happy ending at the end,” Gallagher says.

Diversions – The Debsbegins on Monday at 8pm, tickets €10. Tel: 051-874402. Imagine Arts Festival runs from October 20th to 31st. See imagineartsfestival.com

Imagine this . . .

Some other highlights of the Imagine arts festival include:

Billy BraggIt makes sense, given his career to date, that the Waterford's council of trade unions would be co-hosting English folk singer Bragg's appearance at the festival. He plays The Forum on Thursday. Tickets €20/15

Penguin CafeThey played to standing ovations during the Cork Midsummer Festival earlier this year, so expect more of the same at the Theatre Royal on October 30th

Trad FestivalA concerted effort is being made to incorporate more traditional and folk music in the programme this year, with sessions in local pubs and a concert at St Patrick's Church featuring Mick O'Brien, Edel Fox and the Kane sisters. This runs from this Friday to Sunday

ReadingsAmong those reading at the festival include academic and writer Éibhear Walshe who reads from his recently published memoir Cissie's Abattoir,in the study hall of his old school, De La Salle College. It takes place at noon on October 29th, admission is free

The Country GirlsThe world premiere of Edna O'Brien's novel performed by Red Kettle Theatre Company runs until November 5th at Garter Lane Theatre. Tickets are €22.50/€20 and the production is directed by Mikel Murfi

Unexpected placesThe festival is celebrating the human form with a number of exhibitions in various venues encompassing drawing, painting, photography and sculpture. Artists such as Mick O'Dea, Una Sealy and James Hanley participate, while a class in life drawing will also be held. See imagineartsfestival.com