Aula Maxima, officially the McMahon Hall, is a theatre building in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. It was built in 1893. Aula Maxima comes from Latin, meaning Great Hall. The building is also known simply as "The Aula". It is situated on the South Campus of Maynooth University and St Patrick's College, Maynooth and is the main theatre for the university, college and surrounding area. It also serves as the conferring hall of the university where the annual graduations take place. The Aula was also used as a Cinema for the students in the College, with the Maynooth Students' Union screening films there. Aula Maxima is known for its historical importance, and famed for its many ghost stories and apparent ghostly sightings.
Maynooth University's Drama Society is the resident company of Aula Maxima. A wide variety of their productions staged therein. It also regularly sees performances by St Patrick's College's dramatic society, Maynooth University Chamber Orchestra and Maynooth Community Players: 1997:
First Timers' Festival featuring performances of: The Bear, Riders To The Sea, Living With Secrets, Over The Rainbow, God Has Arrived, Cocaine, Cahoot's Macbeth, Bar And Ger
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
The Mercy Seat
* 2011/2012
First Timers' Festival featuring performances of: A Question Of Sex, A Handbag, Cinema Limbo, Rosalita and Beer-Girl
First Timers' Festival featuring performances of: Post-its, Diversions, Nina in the Morning, Sober and Brown.
Black Dogs
Woyzeck
The Stage
The Fire Raisers
Black Box Festival 2015
2015/2016:
Debutante's Festival, featuring Non Applicable, Residual, Once Upon A Rewrite Beer Girl, Memento Mori, Secret Service, Bury Me Not, Seven Jewish Children, Exhaustion From Having Sex With A Minor, Chairs, A Lonely Impulse of Delight, The Crime Done in Rhyme, Hear Me, A Matter of Husbands, What Happens Behind The Bar, and Armed Robbery For Dummies
Blackbox Festival 2016, featuring The Accident, Best Warm Beer in Brooklyn, Gum and Goo, Yesterday, Hardy Candy, Little Duck, Captive Audience, Good Working With Hands, The Dreaming, The Memeing of Life, Getoutofmyface.com, and Time Flies
2016/2017:
Debutante's Festival, featuring The Angry Doctor, Heart of Hearing, A Blind Date, Accidents Will Happen, A Night At The Movies, Fairy Trial, Adoption, Triple Negative, and For The Greater Good
The One Acts Festival, featuring Tom Stoppard's Darkside , Room 68, Little Gem by Elaine Murphy, and Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry
Blackbox Festival, featuring You Do Love Me, Don't You?, The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of Where Babies Come From, Dance, Chances in the Rain, The Crying Dame, Falling, The Chatshow, Revolutionaries, Family 2.0
2017/2018:
Debutante's Festival, featuring Only Nerds and Horses, Interviews with Loneliness, No Matter, The Wingman, Anger Management for Dogs, A.I. Guy, Rhetorical, The Goon, 101 Ways to Dump Someone in 5 Minutes, Hitting on Women 101, Duck?! and Desperate Gallery
There are numerous stories detailing the presence of a ghost in Aula Maxima. Simply known as the Aula Ghost, he is reputed to be the spirit of a projectionist, active in Maynooth in the 1940s. The projectionist was a seminarian and member of St Patrick's College who fell to his death from the projectionist's box in Aula Maxima. Many superstitions exist regarding treatment of Aula Maxima and the Aula Ghost. One such superstition centres on the ghost's apparent turning of a chair placed over the projection box to face away from the stage if he does not like a performance, or the manner in which the staging of the performance was conducted.
