Serious social side to life in Lonergan’s circus

TV Watch with Dave O’Connell

IT would be all too easy to take the mickey out of John Lonergan and his circus of juvenile delinquents – because he comes across at times as a sort of innocent abroad, a cross between a country parish priest and a character out of Killinaskully.

And here he is, among some of the hardest chaws that Dublin’s rough streets could throw up, trying to teach them teamwork by making them part of a circus act for the St Patrick’s Day Festival in Dublin. They’re laughing at him in the way they’d laugh at any of us adults – particularly if you think you’re getting down with the kids while at the same time wearing a grey suit and a comb-over.

And yet it works, because the former Governor of Mountjoy comes across as someone who sees the best in people, even when they are on the precipice of falling off the edge of society.

Even if he talks like Fr Trendy with a broad Tipp accent, he portrays an inner sincerity – and at times indeed an innocence that belies a man who lived his working life around some of the biggest toerags in the country.

The premise of John Lonergan’s Circus is a simple one – eight Dublin teenagers, all from troubled backgrounds, travel to train with the Belfast Community Circus, with the aim of participating in the for St Patrick’s Festival with Belfast Circus.

The idea is to see how they can function together as a team, how they respond to encouragement and instruction; how they cope with failure, and ultimately if they manage to pull the whole thing off.

Most of these teens are early school-leavers, and most of them have had difficulties in either their home lives or community lives.

Some have been arrested and cautioned; some have family members in prison – and collectively they look to be facing a grim future.

Before this experiment, they had barely left their own neighbourhoods – and now they’re travelling by bus to spend two days a week with the Belfast Community Circus School and their professional instructors.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.