Eight local writers chosen for playwright mentor programme
Wexford Arts Centre in association with the Arts Department of Wexford County Council has announced the eight successful applicants selected from a recent open call to participate in the first Wexford Playwrights Studio initiative.
The winners are Joe Brennan, Imelda Carroll, Sheila Forsey, Jack Matthews, Hannah McNiven, Megan O’Malley, Dominic Palmer and Eoghan Rua Finn.
The group will receive mentoring during the year from leading playwrights and directors including Billy Roche, Deirdre Kinahan, Ben Barnes, and Thomas Conway with advice on script development, dramatic composition, direction and production . Their work, including staged readings and short plays will be considered for presentation in the Arts Centre in 2021.
The Wexford Playwrights Studio has been limited to eight members to ensure that the participants receive individual attention in the development of their plays over the coming months.
Wexford town native Joe Brennan is a playwright, theatre maker, storyteller and facilitator with over 20 years experience and has travelled throughout Ireland and around the world performing and delivering workshops to people of all ages.
A number of his plays have been produced, including the highly successful children’s work The Witchin’ Well which toured nationally twice and was performed at a Children’s Festival in Bucharest, Romania. He was the Children’s Curator at Kilkenny Arts Festival and is the author of Donegal Folk Tales, published by History Press Ireland.
Imelda Carroll is a playwright from Wexford town whose plays and performance pieces have been produced locally and in the UK. She won Scripts and the Write by the Sea story competition in 2016. Her short screenplay, Chicken Out, to be produced by Outleft Productions, has been selected by the DLR First Frames funding scheme.
Sheila Forsey, from Kilmuckridge is an Irish Times best-selling author of historical fiction with an honours certificate in creative writing from Maynooth University. She has three published novels Mending Lace, Kilbride House and The Secret of Eveline House.
She has worked with Kilmuckridge Drama Group and the Watergate Theatre Company during her years living in Kilkenny City. Sheila is an adult education creative writing tutor in Gorey Community College.
Jack Matthews studied theatre at Inchicore College and has written a full-length play under the working title The Unkillable Irish Man and a one-act play which he recently submitted to the Wexford Literary Festival.
He scripted the Heritage Park Digital series for the Irish National Heritage Park which was picked up by RTÉ.ie as well as the upcoming Vikings Journey for Crinniú na nÓg and had fun trying to rally the Wexford Hurlers with online sketches such as ‘Bravehun’. He has also published poems online. ‘The Battle of Corish Park’ was recorded and aired by South-East Radio.
Hannah McNiven is a Wexford native with work published in The Irish Times and Lore magazine. In 2017, she was long-listed for the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award and short-listed for the same prize in 2018. She has written for stage and screen, winning the Wexford Film Fund in 2018 with her short film, The Lady on the Hill which was produced in 2019. Hannah took part in the Seed to Stage Word programme facilitated by Peter Murphy at Wexford Arts Centre.
Megan O’Malley is an actor and writer from Castlebridge, who trained as an actor in the Gaiety School of Acting before going on to gain a Masters Degree in Theatre Practice from UCD. She wrote and staged her first play HOME in 2018. Since then she has worked on a number of productions including her newest play @CupánTaeBae which was staged as part of Smock Alley’s Scene and Heard festival 2020.
Wexford-based Dominic Palmer has been writing and performing since his late teens. He divides his time between creating no-cost black comedies with his comedy duo ‘Taming of the Crew’ and working on larger projects with local artists.
In 2018, his short play Twenty Years Later was shortlisted for the Wexford Literary Festival’s Billy Roche Short Play Award. In 2019 he directed and performed the drama as part of the festival’s ‘Plays in the Pub’. Dominic has been spending his Covid-isolation dusting down old and unfinished works, and connecting with artists locally and internationally on an ongoing Pinter’s Pause project.
Thirty-two years old Eoghan Rua Finn been writing poetry, plays and screenplays for six years. His play Come Along the Road Until You Stop Dead was selected by playwright Billy Roche as one of three winners in a playwriting competition in Wexford and was produced by Newline Theatre in December 2014. The work was also performed by Enniscorthy Drama Group in the All-Ireland One-Act Drama Festival 2015, reaching the All-Ireland Final in Galway in December 2015. The group won over a dozen awards on the road to the final, including six best actor awards and Eoghan Rua won an Adjudicator Prize for new writing.
In December 2016 his first feature-length play Locomotive was produced by Raven Theatre in the National Opera House and the following year, he received a National Arts Council Bursary for theatre. Eoghan Rua’s first professional production was the premiere of a new play entitled The Kill God in the National Opera House in August 2017, directed by Laura Way (Red Rock, Eastenders, Blood) and had sold-out performances.