A collection of new Irish drama from the period after the economic downturn in the Republic, and rising political stability in the North.
Michael West has written several plays in collaboration with Annie Ryan and The Corn Exchange including Man Of Valour, Freefall (Best New Play at the Irish Theatre Awards and at the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild) and the world premiere adaptation of James Joyce's Dubliners presented in association with the Dublin Theatre Festival 2012. Other work for The Corn Exchange includes EVERYDAY, Dublin By Lamplight, Foley, an adaptation of Lolita (in a co-production with the Abbey) and The Seagull which will premiere at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2016.
He has translated or adapted many texts, among them The Marriage of Figaro for the Abbey; a version of Death and the Ploughman by the Bohemian 14th century writer Johannes Von Saaz for Christian Schiaretti of the TNP in Lyon and produced by SITI company and directed by Anne Bogart in the USA; and plays by Molière, Marivaux, Calderón and the contemporary French poet, Jean-Pierre Siméon. His latest translation, Forever Yours, Mary-Lou by Michel Tremblay premiered at the Theatre Royal in Bath in March 2016.
He has written two plays for younger audiences, Jack Fell Down and Forest Man, and in 2014 the Abbey Theatre presented a world premiere of his most recent play Conservatory. For the last year he has been writer-in-residence at University College Cork.
Pat Kinevane is a native of Cobh, Co. Cork. He has worked as an actor in theatre, film, television and radio for 22 years. As a writer he completed his first full length play
The Nun's Wood in 1997 which won a BBC Stewart Parker Trust Award and was produced by Fishamble. Fishamble then produced his second play
The Plains of Enna (Dublin Theatre Festival '99). Pat wrote
The Death of Herod for Mysteries 2000 at the SFX. In 2008 his piece
Evangeline Elsewhere premiered in New York in the First Irish Festival. Pat toured his solo piece
Forgotten in 2012. (Irish Times Theatre Award Nominee 08). He has performed
Forgotten extensively throughout Ireland and in Paris, Prague, Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Iceland, Washington, Boston and New York since 2008.
Richard Dormer trained as an actor at RADA in London, and has since played many leading roles onstage throughout the UK and in Ireland. He won the 2004 Irish Times Best Actor Award for his performance in Frank McGuinness's
Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. He has also appeared extensively on television and on film. His first play,
Hurricane, based on the life of Alex Higgins, the Belfast snooker star, premiered at the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast in 2002; the subsequent tour included the London premiere at the Soho Theatre in 2004 and a transfer to the West End. The play won the 2002 BBC Radio Drama Award from the Stewart Parker Trust, and his performance gained him The Stage's Best Actor Award at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival.
The Half, his second play, premiered at the Belfast Festival at Queen's in 2005. During 2005 and 2006 he appeared with the Peter Hall Company in productions of
Miss Julie,
Measure for Measure and
Waiting for Godot.
Rosemary Jenkinson is an ex-civil servant from Belfast who studied Medieval Literature at Durham University. Her collection of short stories, Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54, was published by Lagan Press in 2004. The Bonefire is her first published play.
Born in Cork, Ireland and currently residing in Northern England, the classical composer and writer Ailís Ní Ríain produces work in a wide range of forms including opera, site-responsive, theatre, digital art, public realm, concert music and music-theatre and aims to challenge, provoke and engage. She won the Tom Erhardt Peggy Ramsay Award with
Desolate Heaven.
