After the lockdown measures stopped a school from producing its annual school play, the teachers decided to turn it into a radio play.

During the lockdown period, teachers and children at the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh in St John’s recorded their end-of-year school play line by line over online conference calls and home videos.

Now, the results are ready to be broadcast on Manx Radio this weekend.

Teacher Aalin Clague, who creates the plays, managed to hold online auditions for the parts and then have the children rehearse, perform and record their individual lines over online meetings throughout April and May.

She then managed to edit together the lines into a coherent radio play, containing 24 different songs

’Every year, the finale of the year is to have our Manx Gaelic school musical,’ said Aalin.

’The kids love doing them and it was a bit disappointing that we weren’t going to be able to do it this year.

’So we tried to work how we could actually get to do one, even though ourselves and the kids weren’t going to be together

’We decided to see if we could out it together through video meetings and some kids did online auditions for their parts at home, or videoed them and sent them in and other people did a collective audition.

’We read, practised and acted the lines and the parts and we recorded all the parts we needed to do. If people had music or songs to perform, they did that at home and sent it in.

’It was possibly a foolish idea and it took a lot of work but I had the bit between my teeth and I really wanted to make sure the play happened this year regardless of everything.

’Hopefully this will be a one-off and we won’t have to do it like this again.’

Written and performed by the school in Manx Gaelic, the play is called ’Mollyndroat’ and is a cross between a classic Manx fairytale and Rumpelstiltskin.

Mollyndroat is a mysterious giant who tries to trick a young lady into marrying him and the only way to escape him is to guess his name.

Altogether, 45 children took part in the recording, which will be broadcast in three 15-minute episodes on Bob Carswell’s ’Claare Ny Gael’ programme, starting on Sunday, July 19, from 6pm.

The whole play will also be broadcast in one go on ’Traa Dy Liooar’ on Monday, July 20, from 5pm.