“This is the Boy,” Marc Mac Lochlainn says by way of introduction, cradling a small wooden puppet in his arms.
“He’s a diva – he’s all about the blue M&Ms in his dressingroom,” his colleague Joanne Beirne jokes. She winces apologetically. “But at least he doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder.”
The theatre space of the Ark, the cultural centre for children in Temple Bar in Dublin, is a busy but decidedly serene place this afternoon, as Branar, the Galway-based theatre company, calibrate the fine points of their latest production of How to Catch a Star.
One man is perched atop a very tall ladder, adjusting the starry firmament that provides the show’s backdrop. Mac Lochlainn, its director, is wielding a large pole with a glowing star at its tip, attempting to get its positioning just right.
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The small company are chatting about the funniest audience reactions to their adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’s beautiful children’s book, the Ark’s Christmas show for 2025, about a star-obsessed boy who is determined to catch one of his own through any means necessary (including one very funny scene with a cantankerous seagull).
“I remember one kid shouting, ‘He’s just gotta get that star! He’s just gotta!’” Mac Lochlainn says with a grin, adopting a broad New York accent. (The show has toured the world since debuting at Galway International Arts Festival, in 2017.)
“Or the one who said, ‘Where are his parents?’” Neasa Ní Chuanaigh, one of the show’s puppeteers, says, chuckling as she remembers another child referring to the Boy’s operators by saying, ‘These guys are just holding him back.’”
“Some of the kids that see the show are not used to reading to themselves, so they can’t use their internal voice and say everything out loud,” Mac Lochlainn says. “Which is great for us, because then we know where they are.”
Branar made some minor tweaks to the story, but the spirit of Jeffers’s book remains very much intact, from the design of the Boy puppet to the “geeky” set design, which mimics the aesthetic of its Northern Irish author’s illustrations.
It has been a huge hit for Branar, which Mac Lochlainn, who is from Co Kildare, founded in 2001, after he became somewhat disillusioned with teaching and wanted to interact with children in a different way.
“If you think about it, the adults have all of the buildings, right?” he says during a break in rehearsals. “They have all of the museums, they have all of the concert halls and, other than this building here, they have every single theatre. Everything is designed for adults to sit in and for them to watch, and the majority of the programming is for them.
“It’s when you get in and you work with children – and we do a lot of work in schools and other venues – you see that, for a lot of them, it’s their first time to ever see a piece of art made directly for them. So everything we do now is about trying to make sure that more children see more things more often.”
Mac Lochlainn is a long-time fan of Jeffers’s work; Branar has also adapted his book The Way Back Home, the nonverbal nature of which has meant that it travels well. Colm Mac Con Iomaire’s beautiful score for the stage version elevates the magic of the story beautifully, adding a subtle Irish lilt to the story.
Humour, too, has been a big factor in Branar’s adaptation. Mac Lochlainn knows that making children laugh is the best way to keep them engaged.
“The character is quite quirky in the book, so we kind of leaned into that,” he says. “There’s a lot of concentration required of [the audience], and it’s a brand new kind of concentration for a lot of them. A lot of times, children aren’t used to being allowed to sit with their own thoughts, but that’s a gift. So the beginning of the show is quite slow, so that we can say, ‘This is how we’d like you to watch; this is how we’re telling the story – come on in.’”
“I do a lot of nonverbal theatre, and the body language and the gestures are universal,” says Ní Chuanaigh, who is a former Ros na Rún actor. “That’s what amazes me about it: we can travel all over the world and all children are the same. We get the same reactions.”
Cillian O Donnachadha, her fellow puppeteer, says, “Marc has an incredible ability to create magic out of something very simple. That’s what draws me to working with Branar.
“In general, ego is part of being an actor, but I realised very young that I never wanted to be centre-stage. So puppetry is perfect, because you’re either under a table or you’re as far back as possible, hoping that no one can see you. I love the anonymity of that.”
Mac Lochlainn wanted the adaptation to “be like that moment where you have your arm around the child, and you’re telling them the story,” he says. “That notion of a hug runs all the way through this. It’s very different to a pantomime. It’s more intimate, but I think it has seasonal appeal.”
How to Catch a Star will tour Ireland in the autumn of 2026, one of a multitude of national and international tours, shows and new works in the works to mark Branar’s 25th birthday.
“Work for adults doesn’t get this lifespan,” Mac Lochlainn says. “So the Arts Council and the policymakers can see that if you invest in this work, look at the longevity that it has. You could put the same money into a show for adults that runs for a week in a venue, and it’s done – gone forever. I’m not saying it doesn’t deserve to exist, but the value for money in investing in work for young audiences has a far greater appeal.”
How to Catch a Star, staged by Branar, is at the Ark, in Dublin, until Tuesday, December 30th
