Irish Theatre At Play

Did you miss us?! Don’t worry, we’re back with a bang as this week Carole has not one, not two but three wonderful guests! Paddy Murphy is a film-maker from Clare/Limerick [call it border confusion] who has directed 3 feature films and over a dozen shorts with Celtic Badger Media. Paddy Murphy's second feature film The Perished world premiered at FrightFest in 2019, which is the UK's largest horror festival. Paddy also likes to get scared by digital things as a twitch streamer & youtube bai. Sinéad Morrissey is a Cork based writer and actor who misses hugs and fresh pints of Guinness very much. Lulu is the first time Sinéad will be taking her talents in front of the camera and off the stage after directing acting and writing various Limerick projects during her time in UL. Mikey Casey is a writer/actor from Limerick. Mikey graduated from Mary I with a BA in Contemporary Applied Theatre Studies and has since both been working in theatre and film. Mikey also plays guitar very poorly but no one has had the heart to ask him to stop. Here’s the link to their Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelcaseydirector/lulu-and-the-electric-dreamboat

This week Carole chats to Brynn Murphy, a theatre programmer, marketer and producer originally from Chicago and the American Midwest. She has worked with many highly-esteemed arts organisations including Live Nation, Cirque du Soleil, Joffrey Ballet, The Lyric Opera, Broadway In Chicago, Landmark Productions as well as many Broadway and West End touring shows. She has earned degrees from DePaul University as well as University College Dublin.

Hi everyone! Welcome back to this week's episode of Irish Theatre At Play. This week, Carole is joined by Katie McCann to chat about all things theatre, directing, and making art in the Post-COVID world.

This week Carole chats to Tara Doolan, Pius McGrath, and James Corr about the very exciting live production of ‘Waiting for Poirot’ currently on in Limerick city in connection with the Lime Tree Theatre. The gang chat all things live theatre in Covid. If you’re interested in the show, please see the Lime Tree Theatre website for more details.

Anna is a freelance theatre director, playwright, and physical theatre practitioner.   Since training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where she was the youngest ever recipient of the Elsa Roberts Award for Directing, Anna founded Quintessence Theatre in Louth, with whom she is the Artistic Director. Since then Anna has created plays all across Ireland and the UK, specialising in collaborative physical ensemble storytelling on socially provocative issues. Anna was an Education Practitioner with Shakespeare's Globe, London, and a Young Creative Associate of the Pleasance Theatre, London and Edinburgh.  CRACKS, an originally devised play exploring suicide and mental illness in Ireland, toured nationally in 2018, and her own adaptation of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA won the Broadway World Ireland Regional Award 2018/2019 for Best New Play. BEHIND LOCKED DOORS, a devised play exploring abuse in lockdown, premiered last month in the Drogheda Arts Festival, and can be streamed on their… ​... and all 4 episodes can be streamed for free on their YouTube Channel here: https://youtube.com/channel/UCQyxh1NGoS8YDlCsvl_zhfg Her latest digital play, AFLOAT, with Sunday’s Child Theatre, will play as part of the digital programme of Summerhall in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month. You can get more info and tickets to watch it here: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/afloat-by-eva-o-connor-and-hildgegard-ryan Website: https://annasimpson050987.wixsite.com/annasimpson Insta: @the_director_anna_simpson   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quintessencetheatreco/ Twitter: @annasimpson87 @quintessencepro Drogheda Arts Festival - YouTube Drogheda Arts Festival is back with an exclusive programme of events; online, offsite, outdoors and live over summer 2021. Beginning on the June Bank Holiday..

This week Carole chats to comedian Ailish McCarthy. Since her arrival on the comedy scene in 2019, Ailish has performed at the Vodafone Comedy Festival, MC'd at the Hazelwood tent in electric picnic, and performed in YukYuks in Vancouver. During the pandemic she co hosts a weekly show on Thursday called the party tits, appeared as a guest on Virgin Medias hooked on podcast, Komedians International (Comedy Central) and was the host of the Comedy Crowd Euros Campaign. She was the first comic and first female comic to reach 1,000 laughs on Jason Byrnes iLaugh app. She is also one of the members of the Comedy safety standards, promoting safety in comedy Her two hander comedy WingWoman will be programmed as part of the underbelly at Edinburgh Fringe, and Brighton Fringe in 2022. https://contactailish.wixsite.com/mysite-3 Insta @ailo7 TikTok @ailo7comedy Facebook @ptpod Twitter @Ailo_7 or @YouHideIFindit

This week Carole chats to William Keohane, a writer and poet from Limerick. His work has appeared in Hennessy New Irish Writing, The Ogham Stone, and most recently, in Lasta, a nationwide arts programme for young people, by young people. He is currently completing a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

This week Carole chats to Sarah Hall, Deputy Venue Manager of the Gaiety Theatre.  Sarah has worked in the entertainment industry for almost 10 years and has had the pleasure of experiencing many different sides of the industry from large international festivals to intimate corporate events, theatre production and venue management!

This week Carole chats to Annie Brown, a former BA Contemporary and Applied Theatre Studies student who is pursuing a career in the burlesque industry under the stage name “Virgo Moon”. She has worked in many aspects of theatre, and is now focusing on developing her skills as a professional producer through the MA programme in Arts Management and Creative Producing in UCC.

This week Carole chats to Seán Ferrick, an Irish writer with two published novels, Down To The Bridge and Shadows In The Stars. He has written and produced several plays, dealing with a range of topics from social realism to theological debate. He currently works with WhatCulture, as a writer and presenter. He lives in Wexford and dreams of one day owning a dog.

This week Carole chats to Dr Deirdre Flynn, a lecturer in 21st century literature at MIC Limerick. She has a background in journalism and Theatre and worked in NUI Galway, UL and UCD. They talk about precarious employment for those working in the arts, and in academia.

This week Carole chats to actor Sean Fox. Sean trained at LAMDA, after spending a year in the Bow Street Academy for Screen Acting in Dublin. Since graduating, he has frequented the stage and screen in both the UK and Ireland, most notably Taken Down directed by David Caffrey and written by Stuart Carolan and Jo Spain, Jimmy's Hall directed by Ken Loach, Taming of the Shrew at the Globe, The Cripple of Inishmaan at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin and Holby City.

With the CAO Change of Mind coming up, this week Carole chats to Róisín Burke and Aoife Gleeson who have recently completed the BA CATS course and are here to talk about their time at MIC. They chat about their favourite parts of the course from the small class sizes to fantastic placement opportunities. They also discuss their upcoming positions as President and Vice President of Mary Immaculate Student's Union.

This week Carole chats to Caitríona Daly, a writer from Dublin. Her plays include Panned, Test Dummy (Irish Times Theatre Award Best New Play Nominee 2016) and Normal (Dublin Fringe 2017: Fishamble New Writing Award Nominee and First Fortnight Nominee). She is currently under commission with The Abbey Theatre and Fishamble: The New Play Company.

This week Carole chats to Ann Blake, a Limerick performer, playwright, director, podcaster and musician. She works freelance and collaboratively with organisations such as  Gúna Nua Theatre Company, Beyond The Bark, Narrative 4, Ormston House, as well as institutions such as UL and MIC. In 2017 she wrote and performed in The Morning After The Life Before, an autobiographical play that charts her relationship with her now wife, Jenny and their journey through the Marriage Equality Referendum in 2015. Described by Katy Hayes in the Irish Independent as a “Superbly illuminating drama about love in our times”, the Gúna Nua Theatre production has since become an internationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning success that has toured Ireland as well as travelled to The UK, Canada and New York.

Welcome back, everyone! This week Carole chats to Dr. Ciara Murphy who is currently a Lecturer of Creative Arts Teaching and Learning at NUIG. Ciara was a researcher on the Gender Counts Report that came out of the #WakingTheFeminists movement, and on the new #WTF 5 Years On Report. She’s on today to chat about all things feminism and gender equality in Irish theatre.

This week on Irish Theatre at Play, we're delighted to be joined by Dr Fiona McDonagh, who is a lecturer here in the Drama Department at MIC. She is a theatremaker, deviser, academic, and general legend. She has been with the BA CATS programme since it's inception in 2015. Her research specialisms lie in the fields of Theatre for Young Audiences, Theatre in Education, and Community Theatre. She's with us here today to chat all things TYA, and why theatre is so important for young people, particularly during a pandemic. And, if you listen closely, you might even hear a cameo from one of her wonderful dogs!

Gill Lambert is an award winning scenographer, performance designer and theatre maker currently based in Dublin. She holds an MFA in Scenography from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She is currently designing the BA CATS first and fourth year shows in the Lime Tree theatre. Her work revolves around the body of the spectator, paradoxes of proximity and position, and participation in relation to the construction of space and design. She’s here this week to chat about all things designing, and her work with with the BA CATS.

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Irish Theatre at Play. This week we are joined by Ryan Goodfellow, a third-year student of the BA in Contemporary & Applied Theatre Studies at MIC. Ryan is the producer of Irish Theatre At Play and a student that is keenly interested in the area of Sound Design for Theatre. We talk all things sound design, the student theatre experience, and dropping watermelons from a two-story height to simulate the crushing of a human head! Great stuff!

Welcome back to Irish Theatre At Play! We are delighted to be joined this week by Dr. David Clare for an episode centred around theatre history, specifically within an Irish context. Dr. David Clare is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Previously, he held two IRC postdoctoral fellowships at NUI Galway, both of which were based in the Moore Institute. These projects included his own "The Hibernicising of the Anglo-Irish Playwright" (2014-2016) and the Prof. Patrick Lonergan-led "Performance, Nation, and Globalization: Modern Irish Drama and its International Contexts" (2012-2013). His books include the monographs Bernard Shaw's Irish Outlook (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Irish Anglican Literature and Drama: Hybridity and Discord (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming) and the edited collections The Gate Theatre, Dublin: Inspiration and Craft (Carysfort/Peter Lang, 2018) and The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights (1716-2016) (2 vols., Liverpool UP, forthcoming). His essays have appeared in several edited collections plus the following journals: the Irish Studies Review, the New Hibernia Review, the Irish University Review, SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, Studies in Burke and His Time, the Irish Review, the Eugene O'Neill Review, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, the James Joyce Literary Supplement, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, the Irish Literary Supplement, the Journal of Beckett Studies, Irish Archives, the Irish Jurist, and Emerging Perspectives. At Mary Immaculate College, Dr. Clare teaches various modules related to theatre history, contemporary Irish and world drama, the intersection of music and performance, playwriting, and theatre business. While at NUIG between 2012 and 2016, he taught on the modules “Theatre and Globalization”, “Beckett on Page and Stage”, “C.S. Lewis and Irish Children's Literature”, “Studies in Modern Irish Literature”, and "Irish Drama from Wilde to O'Casey". Dr. Clare has also taught at University College Dublin, the institution where he completed his MA and PhD; between 2010 and 2013, he taught on the modules “Nineteenth-Century Gothic”, “Victorian to Modern Literature”, “Twentieth-Century Drama”, and “Memory and the Irish Stage”. We hope you enjoy the episode! If you would like to get in touch you can reach us at our email: irishtheatreatplay@gmail.com or through our Instagram @irishtheatreatplay.