Taboo topic is focus of pioneering Galway film

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets some of the cast and crew of Sanctuary which looks at disabled people’s sexuality

I have Down Syndrome and I can be a bit slow at times,” says Kieran Coppinger over lunch in the city’s Nox Hotel during a break from working on a new film, Sanctuary, which is currently being shot in the city. But lest anybody is under any illusion that he is unhappy with his life, he adds “I’m proud to have a disability and to be able to do the things I do”.

Kieran, a man of many talents, is currently playing Larry in Sanctuary, acting opposite Charlene Kelly who plays Sophie.

Larry and Sophie embark on a romantic liaison in a hotel bedroom, having persuaded their care-worker Tom (played by Robert Doherty), to allow them time alone instead of taking part in a group trip to the cinema. The three head up a cast of nine core actors, while there are also smaller roles and many extras in the film which is being shot on location around Galway for the past couple of weeks.

Sanctuary is a ground-breaking film, because all but one of the main roles are played by actors with an intellectual disability – the first time ever this has happened.

Sanctuary was previously staged as a play by local Company, Blue Teapot in 2012, receiving rave reviews and several revivals. Directed by Blue Teapot’s artistic director, Petal Pilley, it was revived for both the Galway International Arts Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival, winning awards along the way for the company which caters for people with intellectual disabilities

The film version of Sanctuary is being directed by Len Collin of Zanzibar Films, a softly spoken man who currently divides his time between Westport and Northumbria in England where he works as a lecturer at Northumbria University while also studying for a PhD.

Here in Galway, he’s standing beside the monitor in a bedroom of the Nox Hotel, supervising a scene before cast and crew break for lunch.  The scene features Larry (Kieran) as he waits for Sophie (Charlene) to emerge from the bathroom where she is having a long soak.

Larry is nervous about what’s going to happen next during their afternoon together – he has sex on his mind, but isn’t sure how Sophie will react.

The bedroom is packed with crew and so hot it’s like a sauna, but the actor retains his focus throughout to convey the sense of a nervous suitor, someone who is unsure where this romantic journey is going to lead. It takes just two takes for him to deliver the goods perfectly.

Little wonder that Len feels Kieran is a star in the making, something he explains once the camera finishes rolling.

English-born Len, who has a Master’s in Directing from the Huston Film Centre at NUIG, and who also has a fine CV as a TV writer, first became involved with Blue Teapot about five years ago when the theatre company commissioned him to write a short film

He did, and it received a staged reading, but the film was never made.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.