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Former Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí Student Directing RTE Show

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Shaun O’ Connor along with Tadhg Hickey worked together on (R)onanism for RTE.

A FORMER Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí student is the director of a show which is proving hugely popular on the RTE Player.

Shaun O’Connor who is originally from Castleisland and along with his friend, writer and star of the show Tadhg Hickey are currently the success of ‘(R)onanism’.

The short comedy show went online on RTE Player on Monday and was, on Tuesday, the second most watched show in the country, second only to Conor McGregor’s reality show.

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The show is a result of RTE’s ‘Storyland’ competition, now in its fifth year, which has provided a springboard for writers such as Kevin McGahern (Republic of Telly, Hardy Bucks) and Gary Duggan (Happy Slapper).

The show is a Cork production filmed and around areas of the county with a whole host of actors and extras.

TraleeToday.ie had a look at the first episode (weird and very funny) and got in contact with Shaun to get his own thoughts on the show, how it came about and how they have both have been handling reaction.

“Myself and Tadhg have been working together for about four or five years at this stage. We’ve made a couple of short films together. We’ve been doing sketches all the time and putting them up on YouTube,” said Shaun.

“One of the sketches we had was almost a fake documentary kind of thing, about this guy who had fallen in love with himself. It was about his life, and what it was like for him to go to work and have friends. Would he go on dates with himself? Would he bring himself to the cinema? That sort of stuff,” he said.

After putting the sketches online, they received a good response and it was when they heard about RTE running its ‘Storyland’ competition again this year, they took a chance and entered it knowing the exposure it could give to up and coming writers and directors such as themselves.

“They selected five projects out of the 200 that applied. Once you got the commission, you got the budget to make four six minute episodes. We had meetings with a company called ‘Fantastic Films’ who are an Oscar winning production company. Their style seemed to suit us.”

“We submitted to RTE under the umbrella of ‘Fantastic Films’ and we gave them a few scripts, the interview went swimmingly and we ended up getting the gig.”

Shaun says that the response has been “overwhelmingly positive” so far. They been receiving numerous messages and photos over social media with people responding really well to the idea of ‘Ronan’ who has fallen in love with himself.

The show will be remaining online for the next 19 days, so Shaun and Tadhg are doing all they can on through Facebook and Twitter to promote the show as much as possible.

Check out the trailer below…