Conamara actor and writer Eoin Ó Dubhghail is getting ready to embark on a nationwide tour of Branar Theatre’s Story of a Day/Scéal Lae, a deceptively simple, music-filled tale of one boy’s day. Eoin tells JUDY MURPHY how Canadian audiences loved this quintessentially Irish work and how performing it keeps him on his toes.

One of the gems of last year’s Arts Festival was a small show, one for families and young people.

Scéal Lae/Story of a Day from Branar Theatre was a funny, moving and imaginative piece about a boy who brought the audience with him through his day, from daybreak to bedtime.

The character was played by actor and writer Eoin Ó Dubhghaill from Indreabhán who inhabited the role gloriously.

The boy who fought against waking up in the morning and falling asleep in the evening, had an ‘ordinary day’, which included eating breakfast, playing sport, travelling to and from school by bus, and contemplating the arrival of a new girl, Nayo, to his school.

Eoin’s performance, backed by specially composed music performed live by the ConTempo quartet, as well as ever-changing, animated backdrops, was magical.

Now he’s back for a nationwide tour of the piece, a collaboration between Branar and MusicConnects, which was created in 2020, and is for children aged four and older and their families.

Eoin explains that Story of a Day/Scéal Lae began life as a Covid lockdown project, when Branar’s artistic director Marc Mac Lochlainn commissioned children’s writer and illustrator Mary Murphy and award-winning musician Tom Lane to create an audio-drama for children.

City actor Clare Barrett featured in the first version, narrating the piece which was recorded in Druid’s Mick Lally Theatre.

Story of a Day/Scéal Lae was subsequently developed into a stage show and Eoin came on board as the actor in 2024.

Since then, it’s played in Limerick, at Baboró and at last year’s Arts Festival, with a tour of Canada in between.

Eoin, who divides his time between Galway and London, will begin this latest tour with two home performances, in Amharclann Chois Fharraige, Indreabhán, this Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7.

He’s been back in Ireland for a couple of weeks, happily staying with his parents in Indreabhán and preparing for the tour.

This work involved making a short film to send to schools in Galway so that children could create their own characters, based on the play. Then there was a photo-shoot, followed by a couple of days off before hitting the road.

There are two versions of Scéal Lae/Story of a Day – Irish and English, he explains.

Marc translated the English version into Irish and the story essentially remains the same, albeit that there might be different nuances.

There are lots of nature references in both, as the boy describes the world around him, describing plants, animals and winged creatures. This means people attending the Irish version will hear words from the natural world that will enrich their vocabulary, which pleases Eoin.

He is equally happy doing performances in English and Irish.

After completing one run that he did entirely trí Ghaeilge, he was favouring the Irish version.

But then, while touring the English version to venues in Canada, he revised his opinion.

“The version I’m doing at the time is the one I like best,” he says with a laugh.

Eoin did have concerns that children in large Canadian cities like Toronto and Ottawa night struggle to connect with a drama that was so specific to rural Ireland.

In one scene, the boy describes the family garden as ‘the place where the house was’, a reference to a dwelling that had stood there in previous generations.

In another, the youngster walks alone along a bóithrín on his way to get the school bus, something that seemed to Eoin to be particularly Irish.

But his fears proved groundless. Canada’s city children loved it.

And when he performed Story of a Day for a group of older teenagers in Ottawa, they had an equally enthusiastic response to this deceptively simple show.

This is a play with no gadgets, no phones and no social media.

“Maybe it was nostalgia,” he muses of their response. “Maybe it offered them a break from smartphones.”

Whatever it was, it worked and so well was it received that Eoin reckons Canadian audiences would have understood the show, in Irish or in English.

Pictured: Eoin Ó Dubhghaill from Indreabhán studied journalism at DCU after school before realising that theatre was his main love. PHOTOS: XPOSURE