Eye Witness
by Tom Kelly
Tom Kelly - Eye Witness
BBC Radio 3: The Wire
Broadcast: Saturday 7th July 2007 @ 9:15 p.m.
Tom Kelly creates a searingly honest investigation which digs deep into the author's brutalising experiences growing up on the streets
of Belfast, centring on the IRA/INLA hunger strikes of 1981. Will life continue to be seen through the prism of that time, or can he find a
future without the burden of the past?
As the autobiographical character, "Eye", reflects on how his life has been shaped by those experiences and how they still impact on
his relationships with other people, he imagines three pivotal episodes in his life being re-told to him by voices from the Maze prison.
A young boy is dragged along with a gang of older boys as they pursue a dog and stone it to death. Later, his mate Frankie is blown
apart, leaving behind only an adidas trainer and a shattered thumb. And finally, he sits in hospital next to his comatose and dying father,
trying to decide whether or not he could bring his suffering to an end.
"Eye Witness" is written with a raw and poetic muscularity and is threaded through with pitch-black humour.
With Michael Smiley [Eye].
Other voices performed by Michael Colgan, JonJo O'Neill and Ciaran McMenamin.
Directed by Toby Swift.
Re-broadcast on Saturday 2nd August 2008 @ 9:15 p.m.
45 min.
Jim
