Biographies
Regan O’Brien is a multidisciplinary artist who has developed a performance practice traversing dance, theatre and voice as a vibratory medium that inter-relates art, health, and social change. At the heart of her practice is a curiosity in exploring flow, sci-fi, human connection and trans-formation. Regan has performed her original compositions in The Dock Gallery, Hugh Lane Gallery, Temple Bar Studios, Project Arts Centre, Smock Alley, Mill Theatre, Brian Friel Theatre (NI), Manoel Theatre (Malta), Grotowski Institute, Song of the Goat Theatre (PL), James Joyce Center (Ire). Her work has been commissioned by Corp_Real Galway Dance Days Bodies in Conflict (Ire) SAANA gallery (DL), Alan N. Shapiro for Sandford Instuut (NL), Hypermodernism @CERSA La Sorbonne (FR), Susan Buttner for Orphaned from Belonging @ Luan Gallery (Ire), Emma Martin for Girl Song (Ire) Regan’s work has been funded and supported by Arts Council Ireland, Dublin County Council, Dance Ireland, Dance Limerick, Abbey Theatre, Create Ireland, Flying Turtle Theatre, MAM Ireland, For many years now she has been focused on developing immersive, performance installations and environments. Sculpting relational space and inviting the audience to be at the centre of their own experiences. Her practice includes spending lots of time outdoors and sea swimming as a way of noticing the melody in her environment. Musically she’s into song writing and improvisation, extended vocals, spoken and written word emerging and developing through live performance, recording and collaboration. She lectures in performance studies and vocal and movement practices at school and post graduate level. She continues to facilitate creative and therapeutic voice and breathwork in private coaching and corporate trainings and shares her mindfulness practice in community education.
Jason Byrne is a theatre director and is the Artistic Director of Loose Canon for whom he has directed over 30 productions. He has also directed several productions for The Abbey Theatre including ‘A Month in the Country’ by Brian Friel (after Turgenev), ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘The Comedy of Errors’ by William Shakespeare and ‘Walls & Windows’ by Rosaleen McDonagh. Jason has also done audio visual work for ’42’ and ‘In Vena Cava’, dance works, written and choreographed by Ella Clarke, and ‘Transmission’ written by Caitríona Ní Mhurchú. Jason directed for the Shaw Festival Theatre in Toronto a critically acclaimed production of Tom Murphy’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’. Also, ‘Whistle in the Dark’ by Tom Murphy, ‘Festen’ by David Eldridge, and Die Probe by Lukas Barfuss, for the Company Theatre, Toronto. As Loose Canon Theatre Company’s artistic director, Jason has directed ‘Phaedra’s Love’ by Sarah Kane (which won an Irish Times award for Best Production), ‘The Maids’ by Jean Genet, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’, ‘Measure for Measure’, ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, ‘The Spanish Tragedy’, ‘Coriolanus’ (for which he received a Ford Sunday Independent Spirit of Life Award), ‘The White Devil’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘In the Dark Air of a Closed Room’, ‘Macbeth’ (winner of Best Production Dublin Fringe 2001), ‘Hedda Gabler’, ‘Fragments of a Dead Performance’ (nominated Sexiest Production Dublin Fringe 2003), ‘Medea’ (a work in progress), ‘h’ (an original performance based on Hamlet and ‘The Orestia’ (nominated for a Special Judge’s Award Irish Times Theatre Awards 2005) and ‘Waterfront Wasteland Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts.’ Additional theatre credits include ‘A Piece of Monologue’, ‘Not I’, ‘What Where’ by Samuel Beckett (Bedrock); ‘Wall of Cloud’ by Raymond Deane (Opera Theatre Company); ‘A Whistle in the Dark’ by Tom Murphy (Company Theatre, Toronto); ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Julius Caesar, Turgenev’s A Month in the Country in a version by Brian Friel, Judas of the Gallarus by Donal O’ Kelly, Living Quarters by Brian Friel, Treehouses by Elizabeth Kuti and Observatory by Daragh Carville (Abbey Theatre). Jason was staff director at the Abbey Theatre from 1988 to 2000
Ella Clarke is a classically trained dancer, choreographer, teacher and researcher working mainly in the fields of Contemporary Dance and choreography, and movement direction and training for actors. She is a graduate of the Perm State Choreographic Institute, Russia, under the tutelage of acclaimed pedagog Ludmilla Pavlovna Sacharova, having trained at the Rambert School, London, and the College of Dance, Digges Lane, Dublin, in the years previous. Ella has performed and choreographed internationally in classical, contemporary and post-modernist genres for theatre, opera, film and dance. She is Assistant Lecturer in Dance and Movement for TU Dublin Conservatoire Drama School since 2001, and Artistic Director of Ella Clarke Choreography established in 2012. In 2019, she graduated with first class honours from the MA in Ethnochoreology programme at IWAMD, University of Limerick, and is currently studying for a doctoral degree at the Drama Department, Trinity College, Dublin, as an Irish Research Council funded scholar. Her research, entitled ‘Invisible Constructions: A History of Choreography and Movement Direction in Literary Theatre at The Abbey Theatre’, documents an as yet undocumented history, lays foundation for a practical and theoretical understanding of physical performance practices, and advocates for a recognition of same within a broader ecology of arts practices. Ella’s choreographies include Irish Times Theatre Award winning productions for Loose Canon Theatre Company and The Gate Theatre, with further work for The Abbey Theatre, Peacock Theatre, Siren Productions, Myriad Dance Company, Wexford Festival Opera, Project Arts Centre, Little Wolf Productions, Ella Clarke Choreography and Barnstorm Theatre Company, for work with whom she was nominated for Best Movement Direction at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards 2020/21.
Eoin Winning has been working as a freelance designer since graduating from University College Cork in 2008. He has designed work in Ireland and abroad with a broad range of companies, organisations and individuals in spaces ranging from opera houses to ghost estates. He believes in creativity, adaptability, and consistency. To get in touch or see more of his work, visit his website- eoinwinning.com
Sharon Phelan is an artist whose work spans performance, installation, writing and composition. With specific attention to sound, voice, resonance and poetics of place, her practise engages with ways of listening, field recording and the bodily movement of language. She is particularly interested in ways of knowing sound and listening from a gendered and marginal perspective. Her work often draws on the physicality of sound, through the tracing and re-tracing of sonic artefacts and interference patterns. Recent, projects, performances and collaborations include: EVA International, Earth Rising, Acoustic Atlas, audiograft, Seas Between, a row of trees, Sonic Displacements, Reception Concerts, Alternating Current, Abolition A-Z, A Manual for Rematerialisation, Woman in the Machine, and Resonant Landscape. www.soundsweep.info
Meljoann Ryan is a hyperjack producer from Ireland. She’s been supported by Pitchfork, Beats Per Minute, XLR8, KEXP, Dan Hegarty, Cian Ó Cíobháin, Jenny Greene and Tara Stewart of RTÉ radio, Irish Times, Nialler9, Hot Press, BBC’s Gemma Bradley, Dummy Mag, HMUK and the Arts Council of England. She’s currently releasing a series of self-directed video singles. ‘HR’, her anti-capital concept album, is out now.
Robbie Blake is a composer, director and vocalist based in Galway, Ireland. As a composer, they create music using open and intuitive frameworks often inside of interdisciplinary presentations. Robbie makes use of the body, movement and site-specific elements in performance to foreground a collective embodied experience between audience and performer. Robbie is the artistic director of Tonnta, a vocal group and new music platform supporting contemporary and interdisciplinary vocal performance.
Michelle Cahill is a creative producer based in Dublin, working with a diverse range of dance and theatre artists, presenting at some of the major theatres and arts festivals in Ireland and Europe. She trained as a professional dancer and choreographer. She brings 20+ years’ experience across performance, community dance engagement and dance education to her practice.
