The recently launched Limerick Arts Encounter is an initiative aimed at enabling the city’s arts practitioners to deliver a varied programme with funding from the Arts Council.

The new theatre will offer a venue for professional tours, director Louise Donlon tells Colette Sheridan

A new theatre housed in the €30m multi-purpose Tara building at Limerick’s Mary Immaculate College will open with the Abbey Theatre’s production of Sean O’Casey’s Plough and the Stars.