Catherine Fay is an award-winning Costume Designer for theatre, dance, and opera.
Designs include Piaf, Romeo and Juliet, and The Threepenny Opera (Gate Theatre), The Crucible (Olivier/National Theatre), Translations, Portia Coughlan, iGirl, Walls and Windows,14 Voices from the Bloodied Field, and Our Few and Evil Days (Abbey), The Plough and the Stars (Abbey/Lyric Hammersmith), Outrage, Embargo, and The Treaty (Fishamble), Breaking Dad (Landmark Productions, ITTAnomination), Elektra, and Orfeo and Euridice (INO), GLUE (Rough Magic), Näher . . . nearer, closer, sooner, 12 Minute Dances, Totems (Liz Roche Company), The Return of Ulysses (Opera Collective Ireland), Owen Wingrave (Opera Collective Ireland), Acis and Galatea (Opera Theatre Company), The Importance of Nothing (Pan Theatre Company), Owen Wingrave (Opera Bastille, Paris), Girl Song and Dogs (United Fall, Winner Best Production and Best Design for ABSOLUT Fringe Festival).
Clare Barrett is an award-winning actress who has worked for all the major theatre companies in Ireland. She recently appeared in Medicine, written and directed by Enda Walsh for Landmark productions and GIAF, the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, and St Ann’s Warehouse in New York which received three Irish Times Theatre Award nominations in 2022.
Best known to Irish TV audiences as Nurse Bronagh in RTÉ’s Fair City, her recent screen work includes Sisters (Peer Pressure/RTE/Merman) due for release in 2023, Wild Mountain Thyme, and independent films The Last Right, Run and Jump, and Dark Touch
Denis Clohessy has worked with numerous dance and theatre companies including Rough Magic, The Gate Theatre, The Abbey Theatre, Fishamble, Brokentalkers, Junk Ensemble, CoisCéim, Corn Exchange, The Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Northlight Theatre, Chicago and Beijing Children’s Theatre. He won the Irish Times theatre award for Best Design Sound in 2019 and 2010.
His film work includes music for the feature films Older than Ireland (Snack box Films), His and Hers (Venom Film), and The Land of the Enlightened (Savage Film). His television work includes Am I Here? and The Toy Shop (Atom Films) and the TV series The Limits of Liberty (South Wind Blows) performed by the RTE Concert Orchestra.
Domhnall Herdman is a Belfast-born actor based in Dublin and a graduate of the Lir Academy.
His credits include Normal People (BBC), Flatmates (BBC), Smother (RTE), The Doll Factory (Paramount), and the lead role in Idiot Fish directed by Hakim Mao (Selected for Chéries-Chéris 2022 and Festival international du film indépendant de Bordeaux 2022).
Theatre credits include The Cyclone Kid directed by John King, Angela’s Ashes (Olympia Theatre), and Faultline (ANU Productions and Dublin Theatre Festival).
Kate Gilmore most recently appeared as Toine in PIAF at the Gate Theatre. Kate’s recent theatre credits include: Straight to Video (Landmark), A Christmas Carol, The Great Gatsby, The Snapper, and Assassins (Gate). Her one-woman show The Wickedness of Oz appeared in Dublin Fringe and won the Writers’ Guild ZeBBie Award for its RTE Radio adaptation. Her short film Someday Sadie (Tile Media, 2021, written by and starring Kate) has been featured in Irish and international film festivals to huge acclaim. Her Film/TV credits include: Magpie Murders (Britbox), Striking Out, Fair City (RTE), The Legend of Longwood (Grand Pictures), and Mustard (RTE). She will soon appear as Claire in the new TV drama Northern Lights (RTE).
Maree Kearns is an award-winning theatre set and costume designer and a regular creative collaborator with many of Ireland’s leading companies and directors in theatre, dance, opera, and musicals. She has created worlds for performance on stages big and small across the country and internationally, in site-specific locations, intimate immersive experiences, and outdoor productions.
Among her most recent work was the costume design for the widely acclaimed Staging the Treaty with Anu Productions, The Blackwater Lightship for the Dublin Theatre Festival at the Gaiety, and Orfeo ed Eurydice for Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. In 2022, Maree was chosen to be the lead artist by the Abbey Theatre on a production of The Three Monologues by Jennifer Johnson at the Peacock Theatre, a new initiative where the designer was the creative leader of the show.
Other work includes set and costume designs for The Abbey & Peacock Theatres, The Ark, Anu Productions, Everyman Theatre, Fishamble Theatre Company, CoisCeim Dance Theatre Company, Cork Opera House, Corn Exchange, Landmark, Verdant Productions, and many more. Maree has also worked extensively in television and film and is the course director for the Masters in Theatre Design at the Lir Academy in Dublin.
www.mareekearns.com
Matthew Malone’s theatre credits include The Boy Who Never Was (Brokentalkers), Tarry Flynn directed by Aaron Monaghan (Livin’ Dred), the world premiere of Phillip McMahon’s Once Before I Go directed by Selina Cartmell (The Gate Theatre – Best Actor nomination, Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards 2021/22), EMBARGO (Fishamble), and Faultline (ANU Productions – Best Supporting Actor Nomination, ITITA 2020).
TV/Film credits include Valhalla (Netflix), Darkey Kelly (Screen Ireland), As Luck Would Have It (Zanzibar Films), Miss Scarlet and the Duke (PBS Masterpiece), The Resistance Fighter (Scorpio Studio), and a leading role in Dad (RTÉ | Blue Ink Films).
Matthew is a graduate of The Lir Academy and Trinity College Dublin.
Oliver Flitcroft is a recent graduate from The Three-Year Bachelor in Acting (Hons) Course at The Lir Academy (2022).
He was recently seen on stage in Toy Show: The Musical for RTÉ at The Convention Centre Dublin and in Edna O’Brien’s Joyce’s Women directed by Conall Morrison at the Abbey Theatre.
Stage credits while at The Lir include Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ Appropriate directed by Joy Nesbitt, Jez Butterworth’s The River directed by Cathal Cleary, Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project directed by Davey Kelleher, Chekov’s Three Sisters directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull, and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town directed by Wayne Jordan.
Paul Curley is a theatre-maker and performer with particular expertise in making and performing for young audiences. He has collaborated with a wide range of companies in Ireland and the UK. Some recent work includes: Polar Bear & Penguin (with John Currivan) The Dig and Bake! (with Ger Clancy); Night Light (Teater Refleksion); White (Catherine Wheels); Black Beauty (Red Bridge Arts); The Bockety World of Henry & Bucket, Song from the Sea, Boy with a Suitcase, Jack (Barnstorm); Happily Ever After (Action Transport Theatre); How to Keep an Alien (Sonya Kelly & Rough Magic); Snow Mouse (Travelling Light/The Egg); CARE and FARM (WillFredd Theatre); Mr Benn (Tall Stories). Paul is a participant in Meitheal CPS with Branar and is Theatre Artist in Residence at Draíocht.
Rachel O’Byrne is a graduate of the Lir Academy. She most recently appeared in The Long Christmas Dinner at the Abbey Theatre, Peacock Stage, directed by Raymond Keane and Sarah-Jane Scaife. Other recent appearances include: The Blackwater Lightship (Gaiety Theatre, Verdant Productions); These Stupid Things (Smock Alley) for which she was nominated for an Irish Times Theatre Award; A Christmas Carol and The Great Gatsby (Gate Theatre); The Alternative (Fishamble); The Remains of Maisie Duggan by Carmel Winters (Abbey Theatre, Peacock Stage); Brigit and Bailegangaire (Druid Theatre); and The Mai (Decadent Theatre). Her screen credits include Redemption (ITV) and Mammal (Fastnet Films).
Sarah Jane Shiels began designing lighting in Dublin Youth Theatre. She holds a M.Sc in Interactive Digital Media and a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin. She was a participant in the Rough Magic Seeds3 programme from 2006 -2008. From 2010 –2017, she was co-artistic director of WillFredd Theatre.
SJ’s recent lighting designs include: Polar Bear and Penguin (Paul Curley, Draíocht); The Cold Sings and The Veiled Ones (Junk Ensemble); The Tempest (Rough Magic, Kilkenny Arts Festival); The Tin Soldier (Theatre Lovett, Gate Theatre, Galway Arts Festival); Luck Just Kissed You Hello (Abbey Theatre); Hansel and Gretel (Theatre Lovett, Irish National Opera, Abbey Theatre).
Shane O’Reilly trained as an actor and writer at Trinity College Dublin. He is one of the artist residents at The Dean Arts Studio in Dublin City. Shane has made a lot of work about and with the Deaf Community in Ireland which is inspired by his growing up as a proud CODA (Child of Deaf Adults). Gold in the Water is his latest work, an original musical with Paul Curley and Denis Clohessy.
His recent theatre writing work includes: Swansong (Barnstorm Theatre Company); Windowpane (The Abbey Theatre; Dear Ireland); The Water Boys (Equinox Theatre); Näher…closer, nearer, sooner (Liz Roche Company); FOLLOW, FARM and CARE( co-created with WillFredd Theatre) and The Matador (Show in a Bag).
Shane’s film writing and directing includes: The Water Boys (KCat), PAL (Culture Night 2020), and Näher (co-created with Liz Roche and directed by Alan Gilsenan).
Shane has worked as a dramaturg in both dance and theatre with Jean Butler (What We Hold), Liz Roche (Dēmos; The Here Trio), Emma Martin (Birdboy), Emma O’Kane (Jockey), and Paul Curley (Bake!) among others.
As an actor Shane has performed with the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre, Rough Magic, Landmark, Barnstorm, and Prime Cut along with other Irish and international companies in productions such as: The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, An Ideal Husband, and Private Lives (Gate Theatre); The Dead, Oedipus, Me, Michael, Seven Jewish Children, One Good Turn, Richard II, and 14 Voices from the Bloodied Field (Abbey Theatre); Madhouse (Una McKevitt & PJ Gallagher); Woyzeckin Winter (Landmark Productions); Signatories (Verdant Productions); Conquest of Happiness (Prime Cut/East West Productions); Override (WhiteLabel); Jack, Song From The Sea, Murder Of Crows, and Boy with a Suitcase (Barnstorm Theatre Company).
