Sightless Cinema returns to Laois with ‘Lost and Found’

THEATRE goers are in for a treat where they can relax with the lights out, close their eyes and allow their imaginations to take over their thoughts on Wednesday 28 October at 7pm as Sightless Cinema returns to the Dunamaise Arts Centre with a brand-new evening of audio plays performed in the dark titled Lost and Found.

Runaway tractors, missing pets and a cruise that goes badly off course are all on the bill. Laois audiences will get the first listen before the show sets off on a tour of Leinster and if past years are anything to go by, the Dunamaise will be buzzing.

This is the fourth time since 2023 that the Laois group has taken over the theatre and these wonderful nights have earned a loyal local following. Every show is made by people with sight loss working hand-in-hand with professional writers, directors and sound designers.

The fun will begin when the house lights go down. Rich surround sound will spill from every corner of the auditorium, carrying the audience from a country lane to the deck of a cruise ship without anyone leaving their seat.

Optional blindfolds are offered to anyone brave enough to go all-in. There's nothing to look at onstage because every scene is painted in people’s imaginations, and what scenes they will be.

Cuckoo's Lane is a housing crisis comedy that will strike a chord in plenty of Laois homes. A daughter and her boyfriend move back in with the family, a modular house goes astray, a John Deere tractor careers wildly out of control and a missing pet turns a peaceful family breakfast into total chaos.

Overboard follows a blind girl who is invited at the last minute on a Mediterranean cruise by an old school friend and the misadventures pile up from there. To round off the night, blind performers from the Sightless Cinema Network step up for a surprise slot of live audio drama, which is always a crowd favourite.

Steering the evening is theatre-maker Ciarán Taylor, who founded Sightless Cinema in 2014, who will be joined by fellow artists Amy Flood and Hugh Hick, a radio drama maker and RTÉ continuity announcer. Over the past decade, the project has opened up the arts to visually impaired people. Its story has reached a national audience through an RTÉ television documentary first aired in August 2025 and Midlands 103's IMRO award-winning radio documentary Are You Blind or What?

Laois has been at the heart of that journey. In 2023, the arts offices of Laois, Meath and South Dublin county councils joined forces to form the Sightless Cinema Network with funding from the Arts Council. Its first production, Blind Panic, brought a cast of 25 people with sight loss from three counties together with live music from Steve Wickham of The Waterboys.

Now the Laois group is reaching north. With support from Creative Ireland Laois, it has won funding from Creative Ireland's Creative Communities Shared Island programme for a two-year collaboration with the newly formed Belfast Sightless Cinema. Partners include the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast and the Royal National Institute of Blind people in Northern Ireland.

Sightless Cinema is supported by Laois County Arts Office, Creative Ireland Laois and the Dunamaise Arts Centre in partnership with Vision Ireland.

Tickets for the much-anticipated show cost €15 and €12.50 and are available from the box office on 057 8663355 or on the Dunamaise Arts Centre website. The show is suitable for those aged 14 years and over.