In Autumn 1996 a group of five people: Susan Brown, Patrick Burke, Eileen Kennedy, Stefan Leszczynski and Graham Gill, decided,
(in a room over Gerry Flannery’s bar on Catherine Street, Limerick) to establish a fringe theatre company.
They felt at that time that there was an the absence of alternative theatre in the city.

• 1997: ‘No Way Out’ by Jean Paul Sartre was performed in the same room over Flannery’s bar for five nights
and eventually ran for fifteen. It was taken on tour and was well received.

• 1998: ‘Play’ by Samuel Beckett was performed at the inaugural Limerick UnFringed Festival .
This quickly turned into a successful touring trilogy of ‘Not I, ‘That Time’ and ‘Footfalls’ by the same writer.
A production of ‘The Bear’ by Anton Checkov followed, also performed in Flannery’s bar.

• 1999: A production of ‘Ghosts’ by Henrik Ibsen toured and ‘Lunch’ by Steven Berkoff was performed in Flannery’s.

• 2000: ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago’ by David Mamet gained the company national acclaim with its subsequent tour.

• 2001: Impact staged a co- production with Friar’s Gate Theatre in Kilmallock of ‘Double Cross’ by Tom Kilroy which went on national tour.

• 2002: Impact’s first new play, ‘Effigy’ by Brona Titley was a co-production with Wexford Arts Centre which also toured nationally.

• 2003: Two new plays ‘Billy and Budd’ by Padraig Meehan and ‘Spare Parts’ by Denis Byrne
were performed at the studio in the Georgian House, Pery Square, Limerick.

• 2004: Impact moved into a Georgian basement on O’Connell Street, Limerick and its first production there was another new play,
‘Sox’ by Patricia McHale , followed by a trilogy of Beckett’s work – ‘Catastrophe’, ‘Rough for Theatre 1’ and ‘Footfalls’.

• 2005: ‘The Old Neighborhood’ by David Mamet and ‘Dream Girl’ by company member Darren Maher ,
were both included in the UnFringed Festival. Following this was ‘Today’ by Paul Haughey and ‘Valparaiso’ by Don De Lillo .
A short season of lunchtime theatre was run for two afternoons a week over a two-month period.
It consisted of short excerpts from established plays.
Autumn 2005 brought ‘The Mercy Seat’ by Neil LaBute, ‘One For The Road’ and ‘A Kind of Alaska’ by Harold Pinter ,
‘Zoo Story’ by Edward Albee and ‘The Open Couple’ and ‘An Ordinary Day’ by Dario Fo .

• 2006: ‘Magnum Hopeless’ by Darren Maher , ‘Broken Glass’ by Arthur Miller , ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury , Stephen King ’s ‘Misery’ and then ‘Beckett’s Women: A Season’. This ambitious undertaking involved staging eight plays in one month, ‘Happy Days’, ‘Catastrophe’, ‘Come and Go’, ‘Play’, ‘Footfalls’, ‘Not I’, ‘Rockaby’ and ‘Endgame’.

• 2007: ‘The Shape of Things’ by Neil LaBute and ‘Oleanna’ by David Mamet were both in the Limerick UnFringed Festival.

Due to the pressure of sustaining a venue without adequate funding to pay staff as well as the imminent rent increase, the company moved premises. Impact acquired a storage and rehearsal space in Limerick Printmakers Studio and Gallery. The company staged a rehearsed reading, in the gallery of its new home, of ‘Risk Everything’ by George F. Walker as a taster for their full production of ‘Problem Child’ by the same author in Limerick’s UnFringed Festival 2008.