A tin hut “housing estate” which highlighted the plight Derry nationalists endured during of the middle of the last century, is the backdrop to new comedy show to be premiered in the city later this month. 
Springtown Camp, now known as Springtown Industrial Estate, was formally an American navy base in during the Second World War.
When it was vacated at the end of the conflict in 1946, almost immediately hundreds of families desperately seeking accommodation – totaling thousands of people – moved en masse in to the camp to begin living in the tin huts as squatters.
Now, local playwright Brian Foster, is using the backdrop of the camp in his new comedy “Springtown Camp 1963!”
The action is set in the camp and Derry’s Guildhall back in 1963.Young radical socialist father-of-five, Harry Kelly, sickened by his families impoverished living conditions, writes a nativity play for the local children to perform.
Writer Brian Foster said with the eight-year-old children, played by local adult actors Gerry Doherty, Carmel McCafferty, Pat Lynch and Bill Waters, it will be a nativity play “like no other.”
He added: “Add Seamus Heaney, Joanne O’Reilly and Shaun Coyle to the mix, the scene is set for a night of politically incorrect, side-splitting laughter.”
The production will open a four-night in the city’s Millennium Forum on Wednesday, 16 September next, with “curtain up” at 8.00pm each evening. Tickets are available from the Forum box office, telephone 02871264455 or online at www.millenniumforum.co.uk.
