The Alumni Project: Flies
Flies was developed through a collaborative process with alumni of The Ark’s Children’s Council. Now as teenagers, these alumni reunited to work with playwright & The Ark Engagement and Participation Artist Shaun Dunne, to explore the work of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
On 30 October 2025, the Alumni group had the opportunity to present a rehearsed reading of Flies, the project they had been working collaboratively with Shaun Dunne on for the last 5 years. The Alumni's voice was at the heart of this project from development, script, marketing copy and imagery.
In a Dublin estate, not too far from here, a group of teenagers attempt to write a book report on William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies.
But what’s the point in having “a personal response” of your own when Chat GPT can have one for you?
Set in a park after dark, a free class, a free house and a desert island. Flies is a rehearsed reading riffing on the themes found in Golding’s original text.
This piece picks up where Golding left off. What happens when groupthink turns to herd mentality?
Are people innately bad? Or are our teenage years just a really bad phase?
One thing is clear. For Lord of the Flies to go anywhere, there had to be a pig and there had to be a spear.
So… who’s going to be the pig?
A note from The Alumni
Over the past five years, we’ve developed this project through a series of workshops with Shaun Dunne, exploring our thoughts and ideas through writing and speech exercises. We expressed our movement in the space through improvisation games and choreography exercises.
Together, we experimented with improvisation, choreography, and storytelling exercises. All of these things over the last few years have contributed to the world-building of this story we wanted to tell, and have been poured into this performance.
What makes Flies so raw and compelling is how deeply our voices are embedded in it. A piece about young people, created by young people, is something rare, and that’s what makes this project feel so authentic.
The story comes directly from us, and Shaun, our opinions and ideas were always valued and have left a mark on the final product. The performers are also the creators, which we think is a unique and immersive way to create stories, especially ones that are about young people.
-The Alumni
Performers and Team
Performed by
Olga Buckina, Hugo Russell Connolly, Thomas Kelly, Evie Kenny, Anna Godson O'Doherty, Raymond Murphy, Naomi Ingilosi Moonveld-Nkosi & LilyRose Wogan-Martin.
Creative Team
Writer/Director: Shaun Dunne
Choreographer: Jessica Kennedy
Sound Designer: Reuben Harvey
Sound Engineer: Eoin Murphy
Stage Manager: Alison O’Shea
Production Managers: Mark Rooney & Franco Bistoni
Producer: Kelly Phelan
Dramaturg: Aideen Howard
This project was kindly supported by UNESCO Dublin City of Literature