At 13 years old, Mary-Kate Page is already a professional actor – and she still can’t quite believe it.
“I love being on set, the unrealness of it all. There’s 50 people running around with cables or whatever, and then someone says, ‘You need to be on set in five minutes’, and you’re like, me?” She points to herself, an expression of incredulity on her face. “I need to be on set? It’s crazy.”
This autumn the west Belfast teenager has been on television screens in the Channel 4 drama series Trespasses, starring Gillian Anderson and Lola Petticrew and set in 1970s Northern Ireland.
“Sometimes I think to myself, I’m from west Belfast, how could I ever be really famous or successful? But then seeing people like Lola or Anto Boyle or Kneecap up on, like, every screen, I feel then I have some sort of hope. If they can do it, I can do it.”
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“Exactly!” says Alison McCrudden, the director of Brassneck Youth Theatre Company, and Page’s mother. “If you see it, you can be it!”
This is the Brassneck ethos. Set up 10 years ago as an offshoot of Brassneck Theatre Company – which exists to produce quality, professional theatre from the heart of west Belfast – “our intention was never to be a drama school, it was about creating access to high-quality performing arts skills, and the personal development that goes with that,” McCrudden says.
“We’re not about the big shows. We’re not the Opera House. We don’t do Annie, we don’t do Oliver, we don’t do grades, any of that.
“So what we don’t get are the drama kids, and the drama mums that go with the drama kids, but we’re getting the kids who really need it.”
At the same time, “the industry was beginning to rumble here,” she says. “We never set out to get the kids to become professional actors; it’s a brilliant byproduct of what we do.”
About five or six years ago, one casting agent came through us because they were looking for authentic working-class kids. Now we’re putting kids up for stuff all the time
— Alison McCrudden
Another of Brassneck’s stars of the future is nine-year-old Dannan Flynn. Also from west Belfast, and a fluent Irish speaker, he is appearing in the children’s series Dar le Daideo on Cúla4 and plays Oisín the reindeer in a new animated Christmas film, Nollaí, made in Belfast for BBC, TG4 and S4C.
“I love acting, absolutely love it,” he says. “I can’t explain it, it just feels natural. I practise my scripts every single night, I’m talking every single night, so I have barely any time to play, any free time, but it’s still a wonderful experience.
“When the day comes, I literally just read off all of the scripts from my head, and I just do it.”
Newly signed to an agent, he is in no doubt about his future career. “I want to do a musical, and a bunch of animated movies, and Irish shows.”
There will be no shortage of roles. According to Northern Ireland Screen, the film and television industry contributed more than £330 million (about €381 million) to the local economy in 2018-2022, and it is aiming for £430 million by 2026.
“About five or six years ago, one casting agent came through us because they were looking for authentic working-class kids, then another, then another,” says McCrudden. “Now we’re putting kids up for stuff all the time.”
Brassneck Theatre Company’s founder and artistic director Tony Devlin recalls the mid-1990s, when he and Jonjo O’Neill, a classmate at St Mary’s Christian Brothers Grammar in west Belfast, became the first in the school to go to drama college in London.
“There was something happening, the ceasefires had come in 1995, the Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement in 1998, there was a lot of love around.
“We graduated in 1999 and went straight into [HBO miniseries] Band of Brothers. It was incredible.”
He has observed “a renewed confidence since 1998 within working-class communities. Somebody asked me recently, what is it about west Belfast right now? For me it’s always been there, it was just the opportunities didn’t exist.”
“But the public perception has changed as well,” says McCrudden. “What you [Devlin] did was come back and invest – this is an investment and these kids are the legacy.
“One of the things we are really conscious of, particularly being in west Belfast ... is intergenerational trauma, we see it all the time, every day, and we firmly believe that the arts are the medicine that will help heal that.”
Both she and Devlin are deeply critical of the lack of funding for the arts in Northern Ireland; the money allocated is just over £5 per person per year, less than a quarter of the approximately £21 south of the Border.
“There has to be a complete mindshift,” says McCrudden. “The arts wraps its arms around every other portfolio and goes: Come on, we’re going to be all right, we’ll get through this.”
She too emphasises the changes that have taken place since the peace process. “These communities that were embroiled in a very unique thing for 30 years can now go to the theatre and see themselves reflected on main stages in Belfast like the Lyric, like the MAC, like the Grand Opera House.
“It’s okay to tell our stories now,” she says. “We’re at that point, that part of the peace process where we’re all breathing a wee bit lighter.”
“It’s across the world in post-conflict societies,” says Devlin. “Kneecap will tell you, they’re not the pioneers of our accent being loud and proud, but they’re doing it with a swagger, and Lola [Petticrew], and it’s great to see.”
At Brassneck, that next generation is reaping the benefits. Flynn’s older sister, 15-year-old Síofra, has learned that “if you be yourself in any scenario, you’ll never be embarrassed ... Confidence takes you everywhere, I reckon.”
“My dream is to be an actor. I would love to go to New York and be myself. Be someone from the north of Ireland on Broadway.”
