A well-known Dublin Gaelscoil, Scoil Lorcáin in Monkstown, is featured in a new fly-on-the-wall TG4 documentary series.
The four-part series entitled
‘An Ceoldráma’ (The Musical) goes out every Sunday until February 2.
The series goes behind the classroom door in Scoil Lorcáin and three other Gaelscoils, one from each province, to reveal what it takes to get a school musical on stage in one of the toughest categories of the competition.
Last Sunday (January 19), the show introduced Scoil Lorcáin to the series and followed their efforts to produce a musical for the National Schools’ Drama Competition or the Féile ScoildrámaÃochta, to give it its proper title.
The efforts of the school’s musical/Glee group to stage a musical for the Féile ScoildrámaÃochta was filmed as part of the series. The long-running competition celebrates its 80th anniversary this year.
Three other Gaelscoils, one from Cork, Monaghan and Galway also feature in the series.
The production filmed extensively with 4th, 5th and 6th class pupils of Scoil Lorcáin and their teacher, Ann Marie Lavery, over the course of five months last year.
Ann Marie is a self-professed musical theatre fanatic who frequently treads the boards herself with the Bray Musical Society and the Dún Laoghaire Musical and Drama Society.
Many of the songs from these school musicals are clever Irish language reworkings of existing pop tunes.
One girl in particular from Scoil Lorcáin, Zena Donnelly, is a rising young talent, having duetted with Whitney Houston in the O2 and having performed on the Late Late Toy Show when she was only 7-years-of-age.
The Scoil Lorcáin pupils performed their Irish-language take on the musical
‘Beauty and the Beast’ for the national competition, a version written by Ann Marie herself.
The TG4 series illustrates how drama and music can have a transformative effect on the young hearts and minds of a new Irish-speaking generation.
Directed by Colm Bairéad (Lorg na gCos, An tÃdh) and produced by Cleona Nà Chrualaoi (Lorg na gCos, The Gathering: Homeward Bound), the series shows the multitude of mini-dramas that unfold behind these musical dramas; the countless challenges teachers face in bringing each musical from a simple idea on a page to an all-singing, all-dancing performance in front of a packed theatre audience and the all-important judges; the funny moments that occur during rehearsals, the myriad things that go wrong before they get it right, and the play, the laughter and the pressure that the pupils put themselves under.
An Ceoldráma airs every Sunday night at 8pm.