Theatre play

A blue ghost is haunting the Dublin suburb of Artane. A child has died mysteriously at Artane School, one of Ireland’s largest children’s homes. Children in gray suits with frozen faces bang their heads against the wall, fold their hands to pray, wipe tables and floors. A gloomy, merciless atmosphere prevails in the reformatory. Hunger, fear and loneliness turn the individual into a will-less tool.

The play “The Blue Boy” (“Der blaue Junge”) is based on the Ryan Report, which takes a stand on the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and was published in Ireland in 2009. For decades, conditions in Catholic educational institutions were hushed up. Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan interviewed victims and researched the background. The collected text, sound and image materials were used to create a scenic multimedia stage collage.

Feidlim Cannon, born in 1978, and Gary Keegan, born in 1976, studied at the Drama School in Dublin and at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. After graduating in 2001, they founded the company Brokentalkers in Dublin. Their goal was to create a space for authentic performance as an alternative to traditional theater. Brokentalkers has performed in various European countries and in the USA.