Back in 1985, during a particularly bad ‘famine era’, the well renowned singer and songwriter and member of the ‘Boomtown Rats’ music group – Sir Bob Geldof, got together with many of his well know colleagues in the music industry, to perform a massive ‘pop festival’ which was to become known as ‘LIVE AID’. All of those musicians who performed at that festival gave their time and services free of charge, thus making millions of pounds for the staving people of the world.

At that time, touched by this dreadful famine killing thousands of people and with a burning desire to do something practical to help the people of the Third World countries, local man Armand Gaillard and his friend, Tony Finnegan, who were deeply moved by Sir Bob Geldof’s massive generosity of man to fellow man, got together to combine their talents in music and drama and thus “STAGE AID MUSICAL AND DRAMA SOCIETY”, Gilford, was born.

Since its inception in 1985, the Society has presented a string of high quality, successful musical shows, ranging from

“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, through….

“Salad Days”

“The Pajama Game”

“Okalahoma”

“The Wizard of Oz”

“Guys and Dolls”

“Oliver”

“The Sound of Music”

“The Little Shop of Horrors”

and

“Grease”

winning many awards at various competitions along the way.

In more recent years, the Society has moved to performing ‘plays’ and they have enjoyed performing to eager, packed houses, three hilarious comedy plays, all written and directed by Armand Gaillard himself – “The Spinners Ball”, then its sequel, “The Weddin’ of Lily Thompson, followed by “Love knows no Right-a-way”.

This was then followed by the more serious “My Final Desitny” and currently Armand has just completed his latest play, another comedy “Honeymoon Hotel” which will be premiered at this years Lislea Festival 2006.

All of these plays have won numerous awards and now have quite a ‘cult’ following.

As has been the case throughout history, Stage Aid is proud of its record that all of the people involved with the Society give their time and services free. This personal generosity of each and every individual involved continues to enable them to work towards their main objective of rasing money for Third World Charities by staging the best possible productions with the minimum of expense.

Over the past number of years, as a result of this commitment and the support of the public who continue to follow each performance, Stage Aid have been able to donate thousands of pounds to Third World Charities.