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Artane Industrial School

Theatre Review: ‘Skinners’ by Michael F. Kennedy

February 10^th 2010, Teachers Club Theatre, 36 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1

As venues go for tales of Ireland’s dark association with the taboo of child abuse, they don’t come more grimly appropriate than the Teachers Club Theatre on Parnell Square. A compact subterranean space in the shadow of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, hidden out of sight below street level, it was in many ways the most fitting space in which to unfold a story which, for far too long, had been kept out of sight, and locked into the dark, silent basement of the nation’s soul. Company D, a small independent company of actors, took on as their latest challenge the bringing to life of Michael F. Kennedy’s ‘Skinners’: the true story of one man’s sufferings at the hands of Church and State. Sitting in the corridor awaiting entry to the theatre, an air of quiet predominated. On the walls were black and white reprints of national daily front pages from May 2009, the day after the release of the Ryan Report, documenting the damning findings of systemic abuse, hardship, rape and violence against children. Continue reading →