Following a nationwide call for submissions eight young theatre practitioners have been chosen to participate in Rough Magic’s SEEDS 3 programme, the company’s training initiative for emerging theatre artists. Now in its third phase, SEEDS 3 will focus on “the company as ensemble” and has been extended to include designers and producers as well as directors and playwrights who participated in the previous Seeds programmes.

The eight artists are: Deirdre Dwyer (Set and Costume Designer), Stacey Gregg (Playwright), Conor Hanratty (Director), Lisa McGee (Playwright), Sophie Motley (Director), Cian O’Brien (Producer), Fintan O’Higgins (Playwright) and Sarah Jane Shiels (Lighting Designer).

With funding from The Arts Council and Culture Ireland, the eight artists will now work together for eighteen months, participating in separate but integrated programmes that will be specifically curated to meet their individual training needs. Mentoring by established and highly experienced artists will remain at the heart of the process, as will international research trips, an international placement with a leading practitioner and hands-on experience assisting on Rough Magic productions. Each playwright will receive a full commission to deliver an original play over the course of the programme and will be mentored by an experienced director of new writing. The international aspect of SEEDS 3 will also be expanded. The two directors will participate in training programmes at London’s National Theatre Studio.

The SEEDS 3 Directors, Designers and Producer will then showcase work as a company at the end of the process during the 2007 Dublin Fringe Festival, when the scripts developed on the parallel playwrights’ programme will also receive rehearsed readings.

Biographies:

Deirdre Dwyer – Set and Costume Designer

Deirdre Dwyer graduated with a first class honours degree in Drama and Theatre Studies and English from UCC in 2004. She began designing with Waterford Youth Drama in 1998. She has since continued to design for them and also for Waterford Spraoi, Red Kettle, Everyman Palace Studio, Half/Angel, UCC's Dramat, for whom she was nominated for Best Costume Design at the Irish Student Drama Awards in Galway in 2004 for The Volitional Brain, and Playgroup, who’s production Dark Week (with designs by Deirdre) was nominated for a Judges Special Award at the Irish Times Theatre awards. She also works as an administrator, production manager and coordinator of volunteers with companies such as Barabbas, UCC’s Drama Department, Cork Midsummer Festival and Spraoi.

Stacey Gregg – Writer

Stacey Gregg is from Dundonald, Belfast. Whilst at school she was a member of Lyric Youth, and participated in local festivals and school productions. She received a scholarship to Lawrenceville School, New Jersey for a year before studying English at King's College Cambridge, and is now completing an MA in Documentary by Practice at Royal Holloway, London. As a writer she is currently developing The Litmus Test with Found Objects, London, as well as Ismene, an adaptation of the Antigone, with Brigid Larmour, a freelance director and producer with extensive dramaturgical experience and Creative Consultant to Act Productions. She is also participating in the Foursome New Writing Programme with Tinderbox, Belfast. In addition she is writing and directing The Memory Bowl, a full-length documentary as her final MA film.

Conor Hanratty – Director

Conor Hanratty studied theatre in Trinity College, Dublin, and at Royal Holloway, London before being awarded a scholarship from the Japanese Government to study theatre in Tokyo. Originally from Dublin, Conor's previous directing credits in Dublin include Shirley Valentine, Les Liaison Dangereuses, Medea (winner, Best Overall Production and Best Technical Production, ISDA 2002), Cabaret at DU Players Theatre, The Bacchae and Come and Go at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Medea and A Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of the Beckett Centre's directing programme, and a workshop performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at the O'Reilly Theatre. In London he directed Pinter's One for the Road and Shange's ‘for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf’ in workshop productions, and co-directed Troy’s Fallen after Euripides' the Trojan Women at the Boilerhouse Theatre, Royal Holloway. In Japan he directed Stoppard's Arcadia and is currently working on a piece to celebrate Beckett's centenary in Tokyo. He is currently observing rehearsals on Yukio Ninagawa’s upcoming productions of Titus Andronicus and Orestes.

Lisa McGee - Writer

Lisa McGee was born in Derry and studied Drama at Queens University Belfast.  She was Tinderbox’s first writer on attachment in 2005/2006.  Writing credits include for theatre include The Young Man with the Cream Tarts (Sneaky Productions Belfast), How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, (ISDA Festival), and Jump! (RNT rehearsed reading). Television and film credits include Totally Frank (Endemol, Channel 4), The Killing (Dir, Tom Daley) and The Meeting (Dir. Tom Daley).  Lisa is currently working on her first feature film with Hotshot Films and the Northern Irish Film Commission as well as developing a new television series, The Things I Haven’t Told You, with Tiger Aspect for BBC 2.  In September Lisa will take up a residency with The Royal National Theatre, London. Her play Girls and Dolls will be produced by Tinderbox in September.

Sophie Motley – Director

Sophie is currently finishing a Drama & Theatre Studies degree in Trinity College, Dublin. Directing credits include The Pitchfork Disney (Players Theatre, TCD, Granary Theatre, Cork), What A Wonderful Word (DU Players), The Man in the Moon, a pantomime (DU Players), The Wizard of Oz, a musical in 24 hours (DU Players), The Love of The Nightingale (Samuel Beckett Centre), The Tempest (Samuel Beckett Centre). She received ISDA Nominations for Best Director and Best Original Production (The Pitchfork Disney) and Best Supporting Actress (The Memory of Water) and won the award for Best Actress (The Country). She was House Manager of DU Players 2003–2004 and Front of House Manager 2004–2005. She was Stage Manager on Making Strange Theatre Company’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in June ’05 and will be Assistant Director the same production in the Project Arts Centre in July 2006.

Cian O’Brien – Producer

Cian has been administrator with the Focus Theatre since April 2005.  Prior to this he was General Manager of Classic Stage Ireland, Festivals Administrator at the University of Edinburgh and Chairman of DU Players. He holds an MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management from University College Dublin. Cian works as a freelance producer having produced the Irish Premiere of Hedwig and The Angry Inch which completed a two-week sell-out run at Focus Theatre in 2005 and a sold out performance at The Spiegeltent as part of the 2005 Dublin Fringe Festival. Hedwig and The Angry Inch will return to Project Arts Centre in July 2006.  He has also produced several shows which have toured to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: comedy troupe How Babies Are Made (2003/2004), Jobless Satisfaction (2005) at The Smirnoff Underbelly and Paper Tigers (2004) at The Pleasance. Cian also works with the Christmas Ballet at the Point Theatre as Marketing and Production Assistant.

Fintan O’ Higgins – Writer

Fintan O’Higgins is a Dublin based writer who has worked as a script-writer on ITV’s Emmerdale and RTÉ’s Fair City. Plays produced to date include: Corpus, a musical based on Prof Gunther von Hagens’s controversial BodyWorlds exhibition, (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), and Headlong (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); The End of the World (International Bar), The Miserable Failure of Bernard Comiskey (2005 Dublin Fringe Festival) and The Worst Thing You Can Do To Somebody That is Not a Crime, produced by Delfina in the Andrew’s Lane studio. His plays have been produced in London and a Chicago production of Headlong is planned for later this year.  Another play, Consultation, commissioned by Unlimited Theatre, is planned for production later in 2006.

In addition to theatre writing, Fintan has been commissioned by Blueprint productions to write a screenplay, Capsizing the Stars, based on the life of J. M. Synge.  He was also winner of the inaugural BIM-Guinness Oyster Poetry Competition. 

Sarah Jane Shiels – Lighting Designer

Sarah Jane Shiels’s interest in theatre began at Dublin Youth Theatre.  She now sits on the Board of Dublin Youth Theatre, and continues to work with them on as many productions as possible.  She recently completed a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where she was also an active member of DU Players.  Recent lighting design credits include The Ghost Sonata and Our Country’s Good (Samuel Beckett Theatre), The Duchess of Malfi (Loose Canon) and displace (Anonymous Theatre Company at Project Arts Centre).  She has worked in various production roles for other companies including Barabbas, Bedrock, b*Spoke, The Corn Exchange, Landmark Productins and Ourobouros.  Sarah Jane has also worked for the Dublin Fringe Festival, St. Patrick’s Festival and the Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures.