Next Stage 2019 Participants
Theatre Forum and Dublin Theatre Festival are delighted to announce the Next Stage 2019 group: Neilí Conroy, Timmy Creed, Romi Cruanas, William Drew, Stephanie Dufresne (Dance Ireland Bursary), Naomi Faughnan, Sarah Foley, Nicola Kavanagh, Vicky Langan, Michelle Law, Aoibheann McCaul, Eileen McClory (Dance Ireland Bursary), Fiona McGeown, Mollie Molumby, Dominic Montague, Rachel Ní Bhraonáin (Fringe WildCard), Katie O’Byrne, Barry O’Connor, Eoghan Quinn, Carla Zúñiga.
Next Stage 2019 group
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Neilí Conroy
Neilí is a Dublin based actor and drama facilitator, she trained with Artstrain and is also trained as a facilitator of Forum theatre. Neilí graduated with an MA in Theatre studies from DCU in 2018.
Neilí has worked as an actor for the past twenty five years and in that time has worked with many of the leading theatre companies in Ireland. Some theatre credits include Sineaters (Anu), Mainsteam, Pigrims in the Park (Fishamble), Its Not Over (Theatreclub), Pineapple (Calipo), Little Gem (Guna Nua), The Sugar Wife, Mrs Sweeney (Rough Magic), Farawayen, Guess whos coming for the dinner (Calypso), Map Makers Sorrow, Done up like a kipper, Down the line (Peacock), The Plough and the Stars (Armada prod), Phaedras Love (Corcadorca), Quaywest (Bedrock).
Currently playing Sharon in Fair City, other TV and film include Headcases, Love /Hate, I didn’t…I wasn’t…I amn’t, In the Belly of the Whale, JustlikeaBitch, A Film with me in it, Kisses, The Halo Effect, Trafficked, Intermission, Bloom, The Medallion, The Van, The General, Nora, Family, Paths to Freedom, The Clinic, Holby City.
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Timmy Creed
Timmy is an actor, writer and theatre-maker from Cork. He trained at the Oxford School of Drama and at Ecole Phillipe Gaulier. He is interested in creating performance that mixes documentary, storytelling and performance art to engage and activate new and broad audiences.
His debut play SPLICED, about his life as a GAA man, has been presented at a number of festivals in Ireland and just finished a month run at Traverse Theatre as part of Edinburgh Fringe Festival ‘19. The show will tour to 20 GAA Clubs nationally this Autumn.
As an actor his film/TV credits include Gateway (Niall Owens), Maze (Mammoth Films), My Brothers (Treasure Entertainment), Vikings S6 (History Channel), Klondike S2 (TG4), Fir Bolg (TG4). Theatre Credits include SPLICED (dir. Gina Moxley), Lovers (dir. Julie Kelliher), Looking For Work (dir. Martin Sharry).
He was artist-in-residence on Cape Clear in Spring of 2019 where he was developing a new show about re-connecting to the Irish language.
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Romi Cruanas
Romi is a Theatre Director, Drama Facilitator, Playwright, Choreographer, Performer and Producer based in Dublin. She obtained a Bachelors of Arts in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin. She has experience in playwriting and choreographing multicultural physical theatre plays such as Roxane selected for the Five Lamps Arts festival 2019 and Behind Eyes in the Samuel Beckett Theatre. She has devised theatre with adults and children in Dublin and Nansana (Uganda). She also directed shows as part of Scene and Heard Festival, Provoke Festival and Galway Theatre Festival and in The Out House and Teacher’s Club and Sean O’Casey Theatre. In 2019 she was selected as one of the artists part of the New Voices of Ireland Series. She co-founded Rather Gather Inclusive Arts Collective in order to help promote a more intercultural, open and accepting society.
She still collaborates with ELEVEN residency in Germany after her theatre and clowning AndroGina experience in 2018.
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William Drew
William is a writer and theatre maker, based in Brighton, UK. He makes interactive work as Venice as a Dolphin, as a Coney associate and elsewhere and is Head of Experience for HiddenCity. As Venice as a Dolphin, he has created interactive theatre such as Kill Your Speed at Theatre Delicatessen and Public Radio at Camden People’s Theatre. As a Coney Associate, he has created and written a number of Coney projects including Act. Don’t Act, Your Connection is Not Private, The Green Gold Conspiracy, Adventure 1 and FuturePlay, frequently in collaboration with Tassos Stevens. Other recent projects include being lead writer on The Circus for Fire Hazard and Ink Factory.
Currently, he is developing The First Time as Tragedy in association with Coney and HighTide, where he is an associate writer, and Exploitation as part of Camden People’s Theatre’s Handle with Care season. He is Associate Dramaturg of New Perspectives in Nottingham, where he has been leading Haunts, an ongoing project to create new site-specific audio narratives around the East Midlands by emerging writers from the area. His writing about performance regularly appears in Exeunt.
More info at: https://www.williamdrew.work/
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Stephanie Dufresne
Stephanie is a dancer, actor and maker from the west of Ireland. In 2012, Stephanie was awarded her Bachelor’s Degree in Dance from the Rotterdam Dance Academy in the Netherlands. Since then she has worked nationally and internationally for companies and choreographers such as Protein Dance, Emma Martin/United Fall, Junk Ensemble, Irish National Opera, Chrysalis Dance, Liz Roche and Marguerite Donlon. In 2015, Stephanie returned to Ireland and spent two years studying full time at the Bow Street Academy in Dublin for Screen Acting. Since graduating, Stephanie has combined her skills in dance and acting in numerous music videos and short films, as well as onstage in the lead role of Karen in the Gate Theatre’s 2017 production of The Red Shoes. Stephanie’s own choreographic work is supported by Dance Ireland, Galway Dance Project and the Arts Council of Ireland. In November of 2018, Stephanie spent three weeks researching a dance work in conjunction with the Dani Gill’s first anthology of poetry; After Love. Stephanie, Dani and Director Laura Sheeran are hoping to develop this into a full length work in 2020.
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Naomi Faughnan
Naomi is a multi-disciplinary designer, maker, stylist and tutor working in Theatre, Film, TV and Fashion. A graduate from The Lir Academy at TCD with an MFA in Stage Design and a Degree in Fashion Design. She is currently participating in the Rough Magic SEEDS programme as the Set & Costume Designer.
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Sarah Foley
Sarah is an Irish Costume and Set Designer with a background in Theatre and Film. She completed her MFA in Stage Design at the Lir Academy in 2016, graduating with a distinction. Her recent design work includes:
Set and Costume Designer : Making A Mark DFF 2019; These Stupid Things Smock Alley 2019; Dublin Will Show You How an Abbey Theatre and The Complex Co-Production 2019; Singing for Survival Run of the Mill Theatre 2019; Archipaelogical Thinking by Ruairi Donovan, Dance Ireland & Cape Clear Island 2018; La Ronde Lir Academy 2018; I’m Not Here THEATREclub Dublin Theatre Festival 2017.
Set Designer: In Arabia we’d all be kings 2016.
Costume Designer: Evening Train Cork Midsummer Festival 2019;The Examination Brokentalkers 2019; Woman Undone Brokentalkers 2018; The Bystander Junk Ensemble DTF 2018; No One Sees the Video Lir Academy 2018; My Son, My Son Veronica Dyas 2018. Dolores Junk Ensemble DDF 2018; Soldier Still Junk Ensemble DFF 2017 (won best Design Award); The Eurydice Project Project Arts Centre 2017, The Passion Project Brokentalkers 2017, The Sea Brothers O’Reilly Theatre 2017, Circus Animals Desertion Brokentalkers Dublin Theatre Festival 2016; Love and Information The Lir Academy 2016; After the End The Lir Academy 2016. -
Nicola Kavanagh
Nicola is an actor, singer, and writer.
She is a graduate of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and The Gaiety School of Acting.Theatre work includes; RIOT (THISISPOPBABY/Dublin Fringe Festival); Deposit (Hampstead Theatre); If We Can Get Through This (24 Hour Plays, AbbeyTheatre); Oedipus (Abbey Theatre); A MidsummerNight’s Dream (Squerryes Court, Kent); Abyss (Arcola); Othello (Frantic Assembly/LyricHammersmith); London Road (Bristol Old Vic studio); Elevator (THISISPOPBABY/Dublin Fringe).
TV credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (LiverpoolEveryman/BBC). As a singer, Nicola has toured internationally and recorded with the Irish choral group, Anúna.
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Vicky Langan
Vicky is a Cork-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice operates across several often overlapping fields, chiefly sound, performance and film. Recent collaborations include improvisations and recordings made with experimental musician Aaron Dilloway, visual artist Alice Maher, master basketmaker Joe Hogan and the Carrickfergus salt mine.
A ten-year filmmaking collaboration between Vicky and Cork-based filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain has resulted in fifteen moving image works to date. Langan/Le Cain are closely affiliated with Experimental Film Society, a company dedicated to the production and screening of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking.
Vicky is responsible for programming, artist development and special projects for Sherkin Island’s annual Open Ear Festival. She has received mentorship from Gare St Lazare Ireland and bursary awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork City Council. Vicky Langan is supported by Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme.
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Michelle Law
Michelle is a writer and actor based in Sydney, Australia. She writes for print, film and television, and theatre. She wrote the play Single Asian Female, which had sold out seasons across Australia. She is also the co-creator, co-writer and co-lead of the SBS series Homecoming Queens. Her writing has been anthologised in numerous books including Women of Letters, Best Australian Comedy Writing and Destroying the Joint. For her screen work she has received two Australian Writer’s Guild AWGIE awards and an Equity Ensemble Award, and she has been a past recipient of the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. She is a prolific speaker and regularly appears on panels and at festivals. Currently, she is working on an original feature film and several new stage works.
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Aoibheann McCaul
Aoibheann is an Actor, Drama Facilitator & Theatre Maker. She graduated Drama and Theatre Studies, Trinity College Dublin, and was awarded a scholarship to study at The University of California. She then studied Drama Facilitation with Artstrain.
TV credits include: Caoimhe Dillon (Fair City), Ciara (Hardy Bucks). Theatre credits include: From All Sides (Smock Alley & The Axis Theatre), Sad, The Pursuit of Love and Happiness (The Abbey Theatre), My Name is Brian (The Project Arts Centre), Sleeping Beauty (National Opera House), Strike (The Axis Theatre & The Samuel Beckett Theatre), The Vagina Monologues (Irvine, CA)
Aoibheann’s drama facilitation work is varied – from children in direct provision to corporate groups. She co-designed and delivers workshops for The Abbey Theatre with teenagers on topics of consent in relation to Landmark’s Asking For It, and Women in Theatre for The Lir.
Aoibheann is developing a children’s show exploring anxiety and resilience.
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Eileen McClory
As an established dance artist, Eileen has worked with: The Playhouse, Derry; Tinderbox Theatre Company, Theatre of Pluck, Replay, ponydance, Accidental Theatre, DU Dance, Bruiser Theatre Company and Assault Events (UK). She has performed in international festivals such as Bauhaus Summary (Germany), Christchurch Festival, Taranaki Arts Festival (New Zealand), Darwin Festival (Australia), Greenspace Festival (USA), Belfast Festival at Queens, Feile An Phobail, Pick n Mix Festival, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and Outburst Arts (all in Northern Ireland).
In 2019, Eileen was most recently commissioned a new work for Maiden Voyage Dance for 2020. In 2018, she was commissioned by the Playhouse, Derry to create TURF. In 2017-18, Eileen was awarded the Artist Career Enhancement Scheme from Arts Council Northern Ireland to develop #theSHAMEproject: An ED Talk, as an Artist in Attachment with Tinderbox Theatre Company. In 2017 Eileen was also selected to attend the SPACE PROGRAMME with The Performance Corporation (Ireland).
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Fiona McGeown
Fiona is originally from Lurgan, Armagh and now lives between Cork and Dublin. She trained at the Gaiety School of Acting, L’Ecole de Mime Corporeal Dramatique, London and with Anne Bogart’s SITI company, New York.
Fiona is Artistic Director at Painted Bird. Previous/Ongoing theatre work includes The Devlin Project at Dublin Theatre Festival ‘In Development’ (Painted Bird), HOME Theatre Project at Draiocht, Death of A Naturalist (Painted Bird) at Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Derry, Toilers – Her Lost Play (Painted Bird) at Cork Midsummer Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival (Painted Bird), The Cat and The Moon and The Only Jealousy of Emer (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company), At The Hawks Well (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company), Love Girl Love (Quarter Block Party), Playboy of the Western World (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company), Between Trees and Water (Painted Bird), Losha (Monkeyshine), A Murder of Crows (Barnstorm), The Bear (Painted Bird), Rhinoceros (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company), At Swim Two Birds (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company), The Third Policeman (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company), The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (Blue Raincoat Theatre Company) Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass (Abbey Theatre/Blue Raincoat Peacock partners) and Translations for The Abbey Theatre.
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Mollie Molumby
Mollie is a director, writer and producer based in Dublin. She is the director of Half Light (Winner of the First Fortnight Award 2016), which she also wrote in collaboration with the cast and creative team. Half Light is published in the compendium Fresh Cuts: Plays from Dublin Fringe Festival 2015 and 2016 (Oberon) and has toured nation-wide. She is the director of Susie and the Story Shredder (Dublin Fringe 2018, National Tour 2019), which she co-wrote with Ursula McGinn. Other directing credits include Disney World (24 Hour Plays, Abbey Theatre 2019). Mollie was recently assistant director on Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper (Gate Theatre 2018 and 2019), and is producing Alison Spittle’s Starlet (Dublin Fringe 2019). Mollie holds a BA in Drama Studies from Trinity College Dublin and is currently studying for an MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management at UCD. She was an artist in residence at Dublin Fringe Festival from 2018-2019 and is the Artistic Director of Bombinate Theatre.
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Dominic Montague
Dominic is a theatre maker and playwright based in Belfast. He has worked across stage, site-specific production, audio drama and film with companies across Ireland, and internationally, including Kabosh, Big Telly, BBC 6 Music, Outburst Queer Arts Festival and Archa Divadlo Prague.
Dominic specialises in site responsive work uncovering the untold stories and mythologies of sites. He is Irish writer in residence for OUTing the Past, his show Quartered: Belfast, A Love Story was nominated for Belfast Pride Event of the Year 2018, and he created and co-directed the SIGHTLINES programme (a development scheme for emerging LGBTQ+ artists) with Kabosh Theatre.
Dominic is part of the BBC Writers Room Belfast Voices development group, has studied theatre in social context at Archa Divadlo, and holds masters’ degrees from the University of Exeter in Western Esotericism (focusing on reclaiming cultural mythology in the Celtic Renaissance) and Queens University Belfast in Arts Management.
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Rachel Ní Bhraonáin
Rachel is a Dance Theatre and Circus artist from Waterford. Her interdisciplinary work (dance, writing, vertical dance) focusses on storytelling and making the political personal. She also has a keen interest in dance on screen (Credits include Channel 4, Film 4 and Dazed Online). Her most recent show Losing Your Body, performed at Dublin Fringe Festival 2019 was nominated for Best Performer, Best Production, the Judges Choice Award and won the Next Stage Wildcard Award.
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Katie O'Byrne
Katie is a Dublin-based theatre-maker and performer. She obtained an MA in Acting with distinction from the Institute of the Arts Barcelona in 2018. She also received a BSc in Neuroscience from University College Dublin and held an Ad Astra Academy Scholarship for Performing Arts for the duration of her studies. She is currently studying at the Bow Street Academy for Screen Acting. She is a founding member of new international theatre company ‘Rule of Three Collective’ who aim to interrogate national identity through their work. The collective’s debut show FREE EU ROAMING had a sold out run at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2018 and was later performed at Bewley’s Café Theatre and the German ambassador’s residence. Katie is committed to exploring the intersection of science and art and how to successfully employ theatre as a science communication tool.
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Barry O'Connor
Barry is an actor, writer and director from Dublin.
He graduated from Trinity College’s Bachelor in Acting Studies in 2007, also training at the Roy Hart Institute, Malerargues. Theatre credits include Abbey Theatre’s Oedipus, By The Bog Of Cats, Othello and Twelfth Night, other theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Alone It Stands, Macbeth, The King’s Feet, Phaedra’s Love, THEATREclub’s Heroin, The Family, History and Twenty Ten.
TV and Film credits include BBC’s Normal People, Dublin Murders, George Gently, as well as Game Of Thrones, Nightflyers, The Tudors, Red Rock and Fair City among others.
Barry’s directing credits include, We Don’t Know What’s Buried Here, Civic Theatre, as well as It’s Not Over, Samuel Beckett Theatre, for which he was nominated Best Director, Irish Times Theatre Awards 2017.
Barry recently wrote and directed Aftermath, which screened at the Galway Film Fleadh 2019 to rave reviews.
He is delighted to be part of the Next Stage programme 2019.
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Eoghan Quinn
Eoghan is a writer, performer, and founding member of Collapsing Horse Theatre. He holds a PhD in English from NYU, where he was a MacCracken Fellow from 2013-2019. Recent work includes The WaterOrchard (Project Arts Centre, 2017; nominated for Stewart Parker Trust Award), and Bears in Space (59e59 NYC; Soho Theatre London; Underbelly, Edinburgh; Project Arts Centre Dublin; 2014-2016). He is currently one of ITI’s ‘Six in the Attic’.
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Carla Zúñiga
Carla is an actress, playwright and teacher and a graduate of ARCIS University. She was invited by the British Council to participate in the Royal Court workshop held in Chile. With more than ten plays premiered, among which are Stories of Amputation at Tea Time, The Tragic Agony of a Blue Bird, I’d Rather Let The Dogs Eat Me (Play awarded as Best Dramaturgy by the circle of critics 2018) and I also want to be a white heterosexual man. She is founder, along with director Javier Casanga, of the company La Niña Horrible, three of its productions have been selected at the Santiago a Mil Festival.