Youthquake

Youthquake, a radio drama project that has been developed by WLR with funding from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, will launch on air on WLR on Tuesday April 2nd. The project has been running since January and involves TY students from Newtown School, De La Salle, The Ursline and Ard Scoil Na Mara in Tramore, who have been developing the storylines and scripts for the 5 half hour plays over the past three months. The plays were recorded at The Broadcast Centre in Ardkeen using the voices of the students and are due to air on WLR every Tuesday evening, just after the 6pm news, for the next 5 weeks. The storylines follow the lives of 5 teenagers in an un-named secondary school in Waterford as they battle with everyday teenage issues such as friendships, sexuality, online bullying and family trauma. The story of the 5 teenagers overlap across the 5 weeks with a dramatic climax played out in the skate park in Waterford’s peoples park. The project was the brainchild of WLR presenter Aoibhin Fallon who wrote the original scripts just over a year ago. “When I originally wrote the scripts I hadn’t really thought through what my plan was to do with them. But then the idea began to develop of bringing the scripts to TY students and allowing them to tell me how they should sound sound and what should happen. No-one knows how teenagers speak and think better than teenagers themselves and the process of developing the scripts over 6 weeks of workshops has been invaluable to the entire project. The students in the 4 schools were fantastic and really got into the whole project.” The six weeks of workshops were co-ordinated by well-known Waterford writer and director Liam Meagher, who also directed the plays. The story of Youthquake follows the lives of 5 teenagers; Anna who has run away with her boyfriend, Alan, to spend the night together. Will she be able to patch things up with her mother and will she regret her actions; Alan, a 16 year old boy who is struggling with the recent separation of his parents and the fact that the whole school is talking about him running away with his girlfriend; Jane, Anna’s best friend, who is the biggest Ariana Grande fan in the school. When she misses out on tickets to her concert and her arch enemy Sally Smith gets them, things get messy; Sally, who has a weekly vlog about everyday issues. She is desperate for fame, but when Luke Callahan, the most popular guy in school, contacts her online asking her for nudes she takes matters into her own hands; and Luke, who has a less than ideal home life. How will he deal with the guilt of what he has done to Sally and will the school find out it was him? The 5 lives of these five friends and not friends overlap and intertwine and they all end up in the skate park on a Friday afternoon with a dramatic fatal climax. To allow as many of the students as possible be involved with the recording process the characters are played by different actors in each play, while some opted to get involved in the marketing side, promoting the plays on social media amongst their peers.