GER CAREY is fascinated by the way teenagers are passionate about stuff. The way that there's no in-between, grey area with them. The way they wear their hearts on their sleeves and their favourite bands on their T-shirts.

He knows what makes them tick anduses this daily knowledge to amuse and cajole them.

Ger is an actor, a film graduate and the man behind performances such as Psycho Spaghetti and the Scriptwriter.

His name would be familiar to plenty of students and teachers because his one-man shows travel the length and breadth of the country's schools.

The 90-minute stage performances have to capture the young minds for every second. One lapse and the collective mind of the audience is away with the fairies.

'The kids really connect with my style,' he smiles. 'They'll smell a rat if you're only in this for the money. I know what makes them tick and I communicate with them on an almost intuitive level.'

Ger has been perfecting his stage shows for more than 10 years and is now an old hand at it. It wasn't always the case, though.

'It was difficult in the beginning when I was trying to pitch the shows,' he explains. 'Now I never lose an audience but that's not luck, you have to work on it. The first few attempts, I was eaten up by the teenagers but I had to continue with it. I learned that to relate to them, I had to use humour.'

Some of Ger's alter egos include the likes of DJ Séamus who 'thinks that being able to press play is a talent' or what about Gavin who is 'capable of sucking the life out of any positive situation or event.'

'I wanted to write something that was a good laugh, rather than something preachy,' he continues, explaining that the stage is split between a classroom scene and an area where he does what is, essentially, stand-up comedy.

'I understand their insecurities, their randiness, their sense of playfulness,' Ger says. 'They have an ability to be sarcastic with each other without hurting each other at the same time.'

Now in his early forties, Ger vividly remembers being a teenager in the town of Portlaoise, where he grew up.

'Portlaoise is a garrison town and it wasn't the easiest place to grow up in,' he recalls. 'I really loved music, film, sport and girls – anything that would get me out of being a dullard. Teenage minds are brilliant, they open up like a flower.'

Ger quit his home town as soon as he could, setting off for the bright lights of England in the late Eighties, a time when school-and college-leavers left Ireland as a matter of course.

After putting himself through college when he studied Information Systems in Leeds University, his love of acting and film led him to complete a two-year drama course in Bradford before eventually doing a post grad in film production in the Welsh National Film School. He did have a spell as an actor in which he honed his talents and took any job he was offered. He realised, though, that his career wasn't going as fast as he'd liked.

'I worked out quickly that if I wanted to stay in acting, there was far too much competition,' he points out. 'You could audition for ten years and still not get anywhere.'

In 1998, he returned to Ireland where he set himself up in Carlow. A young man full of dreams of being a film maker, he pulled in all the contacts he had in the film world to make a feature-length work called October.

Filming the movie in Carlow town was exciting but the production ran into financial difficulties. It was too much for Ger and eventually the film was canned.

He says that the partly completed film is now sitting somewhere in England and you can tell that it's a project that he'd love to return to.

In the meantime, he was left with a shed-load of debt that he had to pay off. He came up with the idea of bringing film workshops to schools where he got to see at first hand how teenagers behaved.

The experience of that failed movie taught him some hard lessons, though, and made him resolve not to have to rely on any outside grants or funding.

The dire straits he found himself in led him to set up Armed Eye Film and Theatre Productions which he says is totally independent of any outside help.

He and his Carlow-born wife, Treana, are the sum total of personnel in the company.

'Everything about being an artist today is about funding, grants and filling in forms,' he explains. 'That's really stifling. I said that we'd make Armed Eye an organic project and let it go where it could.'

Financial independence means artistic freedom to Ger because he doesn't have to kow-tow to anyone else's agenda.

'If we got funding from outside, then we'd be asked to address certain issues,' he says. 'We don't have to do that and we now have a product that works without compromise. Our show was seen by 10,000 people last year – that's comparable with any theatre.'

To avoid saturation point and to keep material fresh, he has now developed Psycho Spaghetti II because he's keenly aware that one-man shows need to keep moving on.

'I could easily go out of fashion,' he admits. 'Someone else could come along. But I've now the experience to move ideas forward.'

While on the road with the shows and during the quieter period of summer, Ger uses his down time to write and develop more material. His head is full of plans and has an idea for a sitcom that he wants to film in Carlow. A film lover at heart, he still hasn't relinquished his dream of making a full length movie either. He reasons that the time for the project is good now because the various costs incurred in filming have been slashed.

Also among his ideas is a plan to release a DVD of Pyscho which he'd use as a marketing tool to bring the show abroad.

'Why not?' he concludes. 'It's good enough to take around the world.'