Day 1
What do I know about Navan? Carpets. Tara. Pierce Brosnan. Navan Man. Not much. What do I know about trying to stop kids dropping out of school by getting them to write poetry? Not much.
But I'm ready to learn. At least this is what I tell Paddy McCooey, a peppery redhead from Belfast, community arts organiser and film and theatre director. He wants me on his team to run a four-week pilot scheme using drama as a tool for the empowerment of potential early school-leavers.
The Abbey Theatre (Sharon Murphy, outreach education director) and the Department of Education (national co-ordinator, Claire Ryan, and the department's assistant chief inspector, Colm O Maolain) are jointly behind this initiative, which will involve four projects. The other three are in Cork, Kerry and Tallaght.
Day 2
On a freezing February morning, Paddy, Martin Devaney (the playwright on the team) and I drive north to Navan, to be joined by Sharon Murphy. The theme of this project, "A Sense of Place", seems appropriate, as Navan's place is rather indeterminate. Now close enough to Dublin to be considered a satellite commuter town, it still has the feeling of being a small provincial centre with a Northern orientation. It has no railway station and no theatre.
We meet Margaret Curran, co-ordinator of the Navan Education Enhancement Project, who has been working with these 44 youngsters (aged 11-16) for the past year, offering them counselling, discussion, and motivation. She has the face of a pioneer: tired, zealous and determined. She is assisted by two committed childcare workers, Glen Carpenter and Ian Kearney. She outlines some of the children's problems: alcoholic or drug-addicted parents, behavioural difficulties, non-attendance at school, siblings in prison, being forced to work part-time outside school, parents who are separated or ill. We look at each other, wondering how much can be achieved in four weeks with kids like these.
Preliminary Sessions
A boy sits in a corner with his head in his hands. His brother has committed suicide and he is contemplating the same. A girl speaks about how she was conceived when her father was on a short-term holiday from prison. Smiling and without a trace of self-pity, she calls herself a PR - "prison release" - baby. These are the first two Navan kids I meet and are part of an older group who are in their mid-teens.
The next group I meet are girls, mostly 12 and 13 years old, in that twilight zone where childhood is ending, but hasn't yet. They have that suspicious, moody, flighty air typical of girls who are negotiating the tricky boundaries of adolescence. Paddy uses a simple self-esteem exercise to try and get them to think of positive things to say about themselves. One girl (who later turns out to be a handball champion) can't think of one thing.
I read them one of my poems and they enjoy the story behind it; they ask serious questions about the incident and its repercussions. Then, having each selected a card with a word on it, we attempt to write a group poem. After a few pouts and grumbles, they realise that it doesn't have to be hard work. I simply want each of them to think of a line for their word. I go around each girl and elicit, quickly, a sentence, which I write on the flip-chart in different coloured inks. At the end, we have a 10line poem, which they read aloud, each girl reciting her own line.
In the Beginning
I spend two sessions with a group of boys, aged about 13. They are a mixture of ebullience and bravado. Having me around means that they talk a lot about their sexuality, in an indirect, slagging fashion. They comment on me and my body, cracking jokes I can't help laughing at myself. One of them offers to take me into the toilet and "give me a baby". They have a huge fear of homosexuality. We tell a group story and it revolves around masturbation, bestiality and unwanted homosexual overtures. We don't do any writing. One of the boys is virtually illiterate.
They enjoy "trust" games. This includes one person trusting the group to catch him if he falls backwards off a chair. It creates a good "bonding" atmosphere in the group. The illiterate boy, the biggest and apparently handy with his fists, particularly enjoys the generous role of catcher.
After this, I ask them to do a brainstorm about their world: school, work, the shopping centre and home. I write some of their words on the flipchart. They talk sagely about jobs, hangovers, young ones and drugs (later Paddy will invent an ingenious rap based on some of their thoughts).
Then it's time to write a poem, using some of these words they have come up with. I give them each their own notebook with a shiny silver cover and their name written on the inside with gold pen. This goes a long way towards winning them over and establishing my street cred. "Deadly" is the consensus.
Two of the boys are in their element and quickly write excellent pieces. One, who is crazy about bikes, writes a poem about his obsession. A red-headed, freckle-faced chewer of sweets (who I thought would have no interest) comes up with an excellent poem about the shopping centre: "Young ones everywhere, mad for a shift/ We give them the wink and head for the lift".
One boy is going through a familiar torment: writer's block. We agree to scrap his first effort (about his job in the supermarket) and decide instead to invent characters. He comes up with two names for a pair of drug pushers, Rushy and Pushy, and the next thing I know there's a rap poem flowing out of him: "greedy wafflers/ big fat scofflers/ big fringe tossers/ dealing and wheeling".
A writing session with the girls is slower to get off the ground. They are all giggling, talking about boys. I am amazed to hear the extent of the petting that goes on already among these kids. We invent a story about a babysitter whose boyfriend is calling her from the garden. To calm the children before she goes out to her boyfriend, the girl puts them to bed and tells them a story.
We then go into the story she tells, which is about Queen Maeve (who has a Rath all of her own just outside the town). The story transmogrifies into a rescue mission by Maeve, who is the imaginary friend of Baby Navan, to rescue the denizens of the town, who are all trapped under the river. The humour and imagination of these girls knows no bounds (later Martin's script will incorporate the character of Queen Maeve).
For Real
Martin has written his script, roles have been apportioned, and each group knows what is expected of it. The younger boys are doing an improv/ mime piece which involves drunken misunderstandings, a wayward clock, a stolen bag of chips and their favourite theatre game of the borrowed fiver and how to get it back. The other group of boys will perform Paddy's rap about Navan, interspersed with their poems. There will be a hilarious mimed sequence of our hero having a shower as he prepares to go to a disco. The girls will perform a number of linked scenes featuring Queen Maeve and her sidekick, Queen Taya and several poems.
As we retire to devise the poems, the girls become extremely excited by the idea of fleshing out the story in their own words. There are squabbles about how certain lines should be and who will write each line. They discover the agony and ecstasy of finding the right rhyme. One, a particularly sulky trouble-maker, is wreathed in smiles and says: "I want to be a poet when I grow up, just like you, Katie." I am filled with a mixture of pride and consternation. (Have I filled this child with unreasonable expectations?)
The Show
It's dress rehearsal time. For the first time, the boys and girls are performing in the same space and they are terribly self-conscious in front of each other. There is a sense of awful doubt that perhaps this show, which they have laboured over for so long, is uncool. "It's innocent, isn't it?" one of the boys says to his friend (innocent meaning uncool). "No, it's funny," reassures the other boy.
The chaos of the dress rehearsal is forgotten as the children assemble to perform the Real Thing in front of their audience. Wearing identical T-shirts, designed and supplied by the Abbey, they go through their scenes without a hitch. Two of the traveller children are particularly strong.
Afterwards, the adults drink tea and the children roar with glee, clutching Easter eggs, delighted with themselves. One set of parents wants to know where to send their bright, precocious young daughter to acting classes.
"That was huge, what they got up and did today," says Ian, one of the childcare workers. "The progress from day one has been amazing. I remember some of them were too shy or too bored even to take part in some of the basic games. Now look at them. The whole thing has been a tremendous ice-breaker and has shown the kids that even if they aren't great at reading and writing, they have other talents, like acting and singing."
We leave Navan, hoping that what we have done will be a positive factor in the unfolding drama of their lives. And perhaps their silver notebooks will be filled with more poems to carry them through the tough days that may lie ahead.
The Abbey Outreach scheme in Kerry, LINK, takes place during May. LINK is based in Listowel and will culminate in a street theatre performance at Listowel Writer's Week on June 3rd
