{"id":330549,"date":"2026-03-05T16:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T16:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/330549\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T16:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T16:29:13","slug":"aisling-bonner-praises-aims-awards-that-launched-jessie-buckley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/330549\/","title":{"rendered":"Aisling Bonner praises AIMS awards that launched Jessie Buckley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nAs Killarney Musical Society graduate Jessie Buckley prepares for the Oscars, 2FM Breakfast host Aisling Bonner takes us inside the world of the amateur theatre groups that have been a hotbed of Irish talent since the 1880s\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jessie Buckley, pictured with her SAG-AFTRA Actor's Award, has come a long way from her very first stage role as 'Oliver' in the Killarney Musical Society production in 1997. Photos: Reuters; Buckley family\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/8fbe8fb8-c753-400d-a78a-87fcb5bb5cef.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Jessie Buckley, pictured with her SAG-AFTRA Actor&#8217;s Award, has come a long way from her very first stage role as &#8216;Oliver&#8217; in the Killarney Musical Society production in 1997. Photos: Reuters; Buckley family<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It\u2019s a Friday afternoon in January and my phone is lighting up. By the time I check it, there are over 150 messages in a group chat called \u2018JCS Cast *church emoji*, *electric guitar emoji*\u2019. JCS stands for Jesus Christ Superstar, which is the musical I\u2019m rehearsing for with Entr\u2019acte Musical Society. The emojis are for decoration. I wonder what in God\u2019s name (pun intended) is going on, so I open the chat and learn that there\u2019s big news in the world of Irish musical theatre. It concerns something I describe to the uninitiated as \u2018The All-Ireland Final for Musical Nerds\u2019, an annual awards ceremony for amateur musical theatre held by the Association of Irish Musical Societies (AIMS), also known as \u2018The AIMS Awards\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The group is abuzz because the fancy dress theme for this year\u2019s awards has just been announced, and if anyone\u2019s going to take a costume seriously, it\u2019s these guys. The theme is \u2018Brush Up Your Shakespeare\u2019 and someone has suggested that all 50 of us dress up as Jessie Buckley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Killarney Musical Society graduate Jessie Buckley prepares for the Oscars, 2FM Breakfast host Aisling Bonner takes us&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,312,6361,114642,2625,5042],"class_list":["post-330549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jessie-buckley","tag-life-magazine","tag-nicola-coughlan","tag-oscars","tag-paul-mescal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}