The Sleepwalkers

About the production

The Sleepwalkers is an original theatre project co-produced by Dublin Youth Theatre and Pan Pan.

During an unknown natural catastrophe, members of DYT find themselves trapped in an abandoned building. Every time they try to leave and go outside, they fall asleep and wake up back where they started, back in the gymnasium, rehearsing the same scene from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible:

“Oh how hard it is when pretense falls! But it falls, it falls!

I am so alone in the world now.”

Terrified? You should be. Along the way they try to solve the world’s problems, just in case they ever wake up to find that the world still exists. Think classic horror movie plots, teenage angst, and the natural wisdom of the young, all given a voice that you can’t help listening to.

The performance will ask the question: what does it mean to be awake? Working collaboratively with members of DYT, a theatre performance will be created around the subjects/themes of technology, community and inequality, exploring a series of original texts and ideas generated by DYT members as well as found texts from The Tempest to The Crucible.

The Sleepwalkers is a leap into the void. Are we sleepwalking towards Armageddon? Should we really fear the world changing?

The Sleepwalkers was first performed at the Samuel Beckett Theatre from the 22nd-27th of July 2019. It was remounted as a part of the Dublin Theatre Festival at the axis:Ballymun from the 2nd-5th of October 2019.

Pan Pan Theatre and Dublin Youth Theatre – The Sleepwalkers from DublinYouthTheatre on Vimeo.