About the Show

A powerful tale of war, resistance, and silence told through BSL, poetry, and live performance.

In an occupied town, a deaf boy is killed for failing to follow orders he couldn’t hear. By morning, the entire community has gone silent in an act of defiance.

Acclaimed theatre company Dead Centre makes its Royal Court debut, collaborating with Sign Language poet Zoë McWhinney. Blending spoken English, British Sign Language, creative captioning, silence, aerial performance, puppetry, and live cinema, this visually arresting production brings together deaf and hearing actors to tell a story of survival through language, movement, and poetry.

Critic Reviews (11)

“It’s a brilliant showcase of what theatre can do, and a beautiful story of resilience, performed with spectacular creativity.”
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"Dublin’s Dead Centre is a true marvel, a theatre company that makes intensely visceral works that feel like they’ve been wrenched from a beautiful dream and a screaming nightmare simultaneously."
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"I’ve rarely seen a production so vividly alive to theatrical possibility."
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"It resists the easy, misleading clarity of a news report to show a world where normal life has been upended, exploded, silenced."
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“For all the deftness of the performances, the piece, which could lose some 20 minutes of its running time, wanders down some wilfully obscure cul-de-sacs.”
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"In other moments, the music drops away to a deep, muffled bass throb. In between, we hear long, solemn drones, slowly waltzing accordions and plangent melodies"
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"Deaf Republic will be enjoyed more by those who like visual entertainment than those who, like me, are searching for evidence of new writing talent at the theatre that insists on calling itself 'the writers’ theatre'."
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"A miraculous piece of stagecraft and a strong adaptation of the widely-loved text, Deaf Republic is invigorating and passionate theatre which succeeds on a majority of levels."
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