Work Samples
OUTLYING ISLANDS - The Connelly Theater, NYC & Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin
A video extract from OUTLYING ISLANDS featuring Jefferson White (“Yellowstone”, “House of Cards”), Maeve O'Mahony (Malaprop) Lester St. Louis (Soho Rep's An Octoroon), and Leon Ingulsrud (SITI Company), Lara Gallagher and Peter Corboy (Rough Magic Theatre Company).
OUTLYING ISLANDS is a Second World War story, naturalistic on the page and set in an abandoned chapel. I reimagined it on an island of real earth. The clips below highlight my interest in staging which is pared down and symbolic in nature, minimising the number of props and naturalistic details in favour of symbolic elements and unadorned high-stakes performances. One of the thematic elements of the play is ownership of stolen land: by placing the characters on a piece of real earth, I hoped to evoke an ongoing battle between them over their individual claims to the territory. In a later scene where the protagonists get drunk and sing, the text suggested a storm outside. I brought the storm indoors. Rain poured onto stage, the musicians abandoned their scores, freaked out and wailed, and the actors danced. The image of young people ecstatically dancing while rain battered down onto their bodies and dirt caked their leg, making them slip, sweat, lose their breath, aimed to evoke the coming brutality of modernity - of the war.
Finally, this clip also illustrates my ongoing collaboration with composer/musician Lester St. Louis who is a major collaborator on CHILDREN OF THE SUN.
Photography: Carol Rosegg
Design: Colm McNally, Christopher Metzger
BEGINNING - The Gate Theatre
Images from my production of BEGINNING by David Eldridge at The Gate Theatre (featuring Eileen Walsh and Marty Rea). This two-person play is highly naturalistic and plays out in realtime with no scene breaks. Despite these requirements, I worked with the scenic designer to create a stretched-out space, wider than one might expect with a large, open area in the centre. This allowed me to use the proximity of the actors in a theatrical way while maintaining the naturalism of the play. Some sections played out with them extremely close together, while in other moments I had them play scenes across a huge 18ft gulf from either wall of the apartment, relying on heavy use of silence and stillness. I love working in this way: finding staging possibilities which are inherently theatrical (they’d look silly in a film) but which somehow feed the naturalism of the script. Mining non-verbal meaning from subtle gestures.
Unfortunately, a video archive is not yet available from the theatre for this production. I will update this page as soon as it becomes available.
Photography: Ros Kavanagh
Design: Sarah Bacon & Sinead McKenna
TENDER NAPALM - Project Arts Centre, Dublin
Tender Napalm is a heart-stopping exploration of love in the face of disaster.
If you think you know love, think again.In a time-less and space-less place a Man and a Woman find them stranded amid the dreamlike wreckage of their love. Traversing the depths of their desires the lovers’ ravenous romance and uncensored intimacy hurtles them towards the dark fantasies of two young people in love.Through a swirling world of fragile memory, high fantasy, brutal wrath, and barbed humour they retrace their relationship and time spent together in a desperate bid to relive the ecstasy of their first kiss.
From one of Britain’s most exciting contemporary playwrights, Philip Ridley (Mercury Fur, Vincent River and The Pitchfork Disney) this violently beautiful play is presented by Spirit of the Fringe 2012 nominees Sugarglass Theatre and performed by two of Ireland’s rising stars – Aaron Heffernan (Picture of Dorian Grey; Abbey Theatre) and Erica Murray (Best Actress Nominee; ABSOLUT Fringe 2012).
http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/tender-napalm-2/
Photography: Colm McNally
Design: Colm McNally - Scenic, Marc Atkinson Borrull - Lighting, Issy D’arcy Clarke & Liadain Kaminska Ní Bhraonáin - Costume
HAMLET - St. Ann’s Warehouse (Associate Director)
Video Clips from HAMLET at St. Ann’s Warehouse. I served as Associate Director to Yaël Farber, working in close collaboration with her on the staging of the play.