'Walking The Road'

By Dermot Bolger

Starts October 2009

‘Walking the Road’, (Suitable for GCSE years 10 &11; Theatre studies As /A2) resurrects the ghost of Irish poet Francis Ledwidge a hard-nosed Irish Nationalist fighting on the side of the British Army in World War 1.

It traces his journey from his birth-place in Slane to the mud-flats of his resting place in Flanders. He died during the Battle of Ypres 1917. Bolger uses the metaphor of the road to follow the path of Ledwidge’s life, which – as a labourer and road-builder, as well as a poet and soldier – is driven to war by complex motivations.

By the end of the play, however, his story will compete against the untold stories of the 210,000 Irish soldiers who fought in the British army and the deaths of 35,000 Irish men whose lives were lost in the Great War.

‘Walking the Road’, is an act of repatriation for Ireland’s forgotten heroes, it seeks to give voice to the men whose lives and ultimate deaths have traditionally been written out of Irish Nationalist history.

The shows running time is approximately 80-minutes.