The Blue Boy Devised and Directed by Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan
The Blue Boy is a
co-production with Dublin Theatre Festival, LÓKAL Theatre Festival Reykjavík, Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival Groningen and Korjaamo Theatre/ Stage Festival, Cork Mid-summer Festival. The Blue Boy is supported by Festival Firsts – Electrifying Irish Arts. With support from Culture Ireland
The title ‘The Blue Boy’ refers to a ghost story we use to tell as kids growing up in the Dublin Suburb of Artane.
Artane was the location of the largest of Ireland’s Industrial Schools, which were run by the Catholic Church to house and educate children.
The Blue Boy was a story of a child who died at Artane Industrial School, and whose blue coloured ghost haunts the surrounding area.
As I spoke to people who grew up in Artane I found that the versions or the recollection of the Ghost story are all quite different about who the Blue Boy was.
These differing memories of the same story, and the connections it has to Artane Industrial School, were the starting point for making The Blue Boy”
Gary Keegan Co-Artistic Director of Brokentalkers.
The Blue Boy deals with the experiences of men and women who were incarcerated as children in Catholic residential care institutions.
“It is powerfully physical, haunting material” ****Stars
Financial times
“brokentalkers The Blue Boy responds to the important revelations of institutional abuse in Ireland in a sophisticated and ambitious blend of technology and live performance”
Sunday business post
“Brilliantly intricate staging that achieves a compellingly ritualistic quality”
The Irish Times
“Both a raw and subtle performance with striking choreography and music, a hard swipe at the abuses by the Catholic Institution
Dagbald Noorderzon, Netherlands
“Almost unbearable to watch, but it makes you bear witness, devastating theatre”
Lyn Gardner Guardian UK
For information on touring please contact us at brokentalkers@gmail.com
Quaternaire represents Brokentalkers worldwide.
Sarah Ford sarah@quaternaire.org