Wanted: Brilliant Ideas. Reward: The Future

CREATIVE THINKING:The idea behind Macnas's Boy Explorer – to travel the country collecting children's Brilliant Ideas – is as enduring as it is simple, and artistic director Noeline Kavanagh and her troupe of tricksters have created a legend, writes PATSEY MURPHY

BRILLIANT IS A word we will be hearing a lot in the coming weeks. Brilliant, bleedin' brilliant. It's the magic word that will hopefully banish the Black Dog of Depression who's after robbing Dublin's funny bone in Brilliant, Roddy Doyle's story for the St Patrick's Day parade.

And brilliant describes the kind of ideas The Boy Explorer, the 15ft-high eight-year-old from the Macnas workshop in Galway, is looking for, as he travels the country gathering suggestions from children about how to make Ireland a better place. Well, isn’t it time we got started?

“Brilliant was a brilliant word. It lit up everything around it,” writes Doyle in his funny, observant and adventurous tale. “It was hard to see the gloom when the word was constantly bursting over the city, like a firework display that never ended. But sometimes, even for brief moments, when very few people were talking, the sadness was there to be seen – on the faces, across the shoulders, in the feet. The people of Dublin were very low. They were worried and sometimes angry. They felt trapped, surrounded by bad news. There was no escape. Even children noticed.”

The children at the centre of Doyle’s story, Gloria and her brother Raymond, noticed. They hear adults recanting endless tales of worry and woe, and become especially anxious about their favourite Uncle Ben, who hasn’t been the same since he lost his job. “The black dog has climbed on to the poor fella’s back,” they overhear the adults say, so they determine to find the monstrous mutt and chase him away. Expect children lining the parade route to be shouting “Brilliant!” as the dog lurches towards them. The word horrifies and repels him.

He’s an odious, sulphurous sort of a black dog to be sure, and the Macnas imagineers, led by artistic director Noeline Kavanagh, are in the process of conjuring up a suitably “howling, brawling, biting, bourbon-infested, snarling, moaning hound”. That’s quite a force to release upon a crowd, is it not? “Savage joy unleashed,” she says delightedly. “You find heroes in the most unlikely forms, and street theatre affords you the chance to grab your audience . . . to tickle and tease, displease and tantalise them with unfettered wild, feral energy.”

Kavanagh is a tall, coiled spring of energy whose vocabulary is peppered with epic vivacity. “I think we’ve been polested, which is to say politically molested,” she says, when talk turns to the general election. She wants the energy of sex, risk and invention to inform social change and recites the words sex-risk-invention like a mantra.“The bankers homogenised the idea of risk – we have to reclaim it. The Boy Explorer is a risk. Poetry is a risk. Risk is a wonderful thing.” We could all do with a dollop of her belief in possibility and love of the unpredictable.

Kavanagh started off as a Macnas trickster when she was 17 and has been engaged in socio-political theatre ever since. She studied drama at Trinity College, worked with the Galway comedy troupe Flying Pig along with Tommy Tiernan, and moved to Dublin, first with the Fatima Mansion Project and later as assistant director to Lynne Parker in Rough Magic. The work of the Royal de Luxe street theatre company and its mechanical marionettes are an important influence and she joined the pioneering Welfare State International Theatre Company in Bristol for five years before returning to her hometown “for reasons of family, landscape, sense of purpose”.

She has been artistic director of Macnas for three years and inherited both a legacy from its founders and a challenge to keep the company’s momentum going, as it celebrates its 25th year. With The Boy Explorer she seems to be doing just that.

“The Boy has been with me all along, for about three years now. He’s interested in engaging with children and hearing and gathering their ideas. He feels adults aren’t too bright at the moment and need a bit of encouragement to think creatively and look at alternatives. The children – they’re the ones who will have to live through the consequences of the adults’ inertia.”

The Boy Explorer made his first appearance last year, as part of Galway Arts Festival. He then made an award-winning appearance in the courtyard of Collins Barracks for the opening of the Absolut Dublin Fringe Festival, and that’s when hearts began to melt. “What is so significant about The Boy is his simplicity and clarity,” says Loughlin Deegan, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival. “It’s all about ideas. The Boy is becoming a recognisable Macnas character that we are seeing again and again. There are opportunities for other characters to emerge and populate the narrative. His story will evolve and there will be other characters – and that shows real, fresh, creative thinking.”

Last month The Boy began his national walkabout, visiting schools to find out what his peers are thinking and worrying about. Kavanagh is keen to point out that their landscape, especially at home, has changed just as dramatically as it has for adults and we need to be mindful.

Last week, The Boy turned up at Loreto Junior and Senior Primary schools in Crumlin, and created quite a buzz. The students knew he was coming – they had been preparing for his visit – but didn't know when. (Kavanagh and her merry troupe of pranksters know how to stir up a crowd.) In workshops across the school, using information packs sent ahead by Macnas, each student was asked to suggest a brilliant idea. Angela Mitchell, principal of the senior school, says it went "fabulously".

“It’s the simplest idea and it inspired classes across the school to think up ideas collectively and independently. Our preparations ran alongside the elections and that really made us think that what we were doing gave us a stake in making Ireland a better place.”

One class sewed handprints on to a cloak (hugs) so The Boy wouldn’t be cold or lonely on his journey. Another class made him a pair of warm boots. Fifth- and sixth-class students made lanterns, each with a statement inside, to remind The Boy that bright ideas light up the country. Ideas ranged from planting more trees to getting rid of drugs, but Mitchell’s favourite idea? “Third class recommended that we organise a Friendship Festival – isn’t that a brilliant idea? It’s amazing how something out of the ordinary – little excitements – can capture their imaginations and their hearts.”

What happens now to these ideas? How will the story end? What will The Boy do with his satchel of suggestions and how will he most effectively broadcast his Manifesto of Brilliant Ideas? More prosaically, how does Macnas curate this successful piece of work?

Having described herself before as a “pathological optimist”, Kavanagh is first of all hoping that the success of The Boy’s school visits comes to the attention of local county councils, who will make it possible for him to visit as many schools as possible, North and South. He doesn’t travel alone, alas. He is accompanied by a loyal troupe of imagineers, tricksters, wizards, schemers and dreamers, of course, who engage the children in the project. This requires funding.

She is also considering making some sort of three-dimensional Manifesto of Brilliant Ideas and presenting it to the President.

“The art and heart of this project exists due to artists, friends, family, teachers and children investing their time, energy and brilliant ideas to the work,” she says in fundraiser mode. The ensemble who have brought this boy to life include Kavanagh’s creative partner Dave Young, musical director Orlagh De Bhaldraithe, Tommy Casby, costumiers Triona Lillis and Breege Fahy, Gavin Lewry and Matt Guinnane, among others.

“I am both humbled and gobsmacked by the children’s integrity and inventiveness. I think this best describes why Macnas does what we do. This is the entire reason for the project: joy, inventiveness and free thinking. Politics aside, energy and imagination provide the only course to set one’s compass by and who better to direct this vision than the nation’s children?”

It’s no wonder that one of her favourite quotes is from the Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg:

I am a child again

I wake to see

the world go wild

To read Roddy Doyle’s story, Brilliant, go to roddydoyle.com

For inquiries about The Boy Explorer and his availability, write to him c/o Macnas at Fisheries Field, Galway or see macnas.com