Beckett in the City: The Women Speak

Joan Davis has lived her whole life in Ireland, where she has pioneered innovative dance practice since 1976. Her dance, collaborative, and multidimensional arts practices and performances have been consistently funded by the Irish Arts Council. From 2012–2015, Joan pioneered the work ORIGINS, a fully accredited Somatic training that brings together all her years of movement, dance, therapy and arts practice. She lives in Bray, Co. Wicklow and has three children and four grandchildren.

Michèle Forbes is an actor and writer. Theatre work includes Dancing at Lughnasa, The Great Hunger, No Escape, and Phaedra; film work includes Omagh, Inside I'm Dancing, and Pride and Joy; and television work includes Best: His Mother’s Son, Holby City, and Love/Hate. Her debut novel, Ghost Moth, was nominated for Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and for First Book Award Edinburgh International Book Festival, and its French translation was shortlisted for the Ireland Francophonie Ambassador’s Award 2017. Her second novel, Edith & Oliver, has just been published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Her play POSTSCRIPT, co-written with Noelle Brown, was recently staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Photo credit: Anthony Woods

Anne Hamburger founded En Garde Arts in 1985. As artistic director and creative producer, she is responsible for pioneering site-specific theatre in New York, using its streets and historic landmarks as her stage. En Garde Arts has received Obie, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk Awards for its work. In 1999, Anne was also artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse, developing the Tony Award-winning musicals Thoroughly Modern Millie and Spring Awakening. She received her MFA from Yale School of Drama.

Jonathan Kalb is Professor of Theater at Hunter College, CUNY, and Resident Dramaturg at Theatre for a New Audience. He is the author of five books on theater and hundreds of articles, essays and reviews that have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Salon.com, The Nation and many other publications. He is a two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism (once for his book Beckett in Performance) and has won the George Freedley Memorial Award for an outstanding theater book. He writes about theater on his blog “Something the Dust Said,” which can be found at www.jonathankalb.com.

Tim Martin has worked in the sound business for over 30 years, recording music with international artists spanning many genres. TV and film work include Other Voices (2008–2014), The Commitments, The Last of The Mohicans, and Neverland parts 1 and 2, among others. Theatre projects include Samuel Beckett’s Company (1990–1991), Yeats’ The King of the Great Clock Tower (1994), and Beckett’s Fizzles (2014).

Zach Morris is co-artistic director of Third Rail Projects, co-creator of the immersive theater hits Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise in NYC, and creator of Sweet & Lucky in Denver. Zach's work includes site-specific performance, multimedia installation art and environments, and experiential performance. He has been honored with numerous awards, including two BESSIE awards, and was recently named as one of the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine. His work has been presented nationally and internationally with the support of numerous grants, commissions, and residencies, and he holds a BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.

Bríd Ní Neachtain has worked extensively at the Abbey Theatre, touring nationally and internationally with the company many times, including with the original production of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, which played at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway for five months. Her most recent work has been in Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories and Graham McLaren's stage adaptation of Jimmy's Hall at the Abbey Theatre. She has received numerous awards for her work both in theatre and film.

Sarah Jane Scaife is artistic director of Company SJ and has been researching, directing and even performing Samuel Beckett's work for over twenty-five years. She has toured many of her own productions internationally and has, since 2000, been invited to direct Beckett’s plays with theatre companies and universities in Georgia, Mongolia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, China, USA and Greece. She holds a PhD in the work of Samuel Beckett from The University of Reading, is adjunct lecturer in Trinity College Dublin, and has given countless workshops, lectures and residencies internationally.

Kilian Waters is an award-winning filmmaker and video designer for theatre. His video design work to date includes By the Bog of Cats (Abbey), Samuel Beckett's Fizzles (Company SJ), Come Into the Gardens (OT Platform), The Far Side (Brokentalkers & Upstate Theatre), The BlueBoy, In Real Time, Silver Stars (Brokentalkers), This Is Still Life (Brokentalkers & Dublin Youth Theatre), Drinking Dust, The Rain Party (Junk Ensemble), A Dream Play (National Youth Theatre) and The Colleen Bawn (Bedrock Productions), among many other collaborations. His work has been seen in theatres and cinemas throughout the world.

John Comiskey's theatre credits include set/lighting/video design for Hamlet (Abbey), Sodome and My Love (Rough Magic); lighting for L'Orfeo (OTC) and Kicking a Dead Horse (Abbey); and set/lighting for Mermaids (CoisCéim) and Copenhagen (Rough Magic), which won an Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Design. He was curator and designer of the Irish participation at the Prague Quadrennial Exhibition of world theatre design 2007. Film and television director credits include the dance film Hit and Run, documentaries Behind the Walls and The Berlin Years of Agnes Bernelle, Celtic Woman, the Eurovision Song Contest 1995, Nighthawks, and numerous other programs.

Sinéad Cuthbert has designed for many theatre productions, including The Bloody Irish (Bloody Productions 2015); Borstal Boy (Gaiety and Verdant, 2014); The Clearing (The Lir Academy, 2014); Break (Hotfortheatre, 2013); Mary Stuart (Pageant Wagon, 2013); Steel Magnolias (Solar Theatre, 2012); Homeplace (The Lyric Theatre, 2009); Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw (Storytellers, 2008); Translations, Making History, Myrmidons, Amadeus (Ouroboros 2004-2008); and Alice In Wonderland (Landmark, 2007); among many others. She is a member of Ouroboros Theatre Company and is the costume coordinator in the School of Drama at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, where she has taught costume design since 2004.

Kathryn Lennon’s career spans a variety of event management, film, television and theatre projects. With a background in arts administration, she started working with Rough Magic Theatre productions in the late 1980s, later moving to event management for Dublin City Council and Temple Bar Properties. Lennon progressed to various roles in feature film productions and is co-founder and director of Saffron Pictures, who have recently produced a six-part drama for RTÉ. She has produced all of Company SJ’s site-specific productions since 2014.

Lianne O'Shea has been a theatre-maker since 2006. Recently she has worked as a designer on productions of The Playboy of the Western World, The Seagull, and Easter 1917 (Moat Theatre, Naas). As a lighting designer she has worked on a variety of productions, from musicals such as Thoroughly Modern Millie (Clane Abbey) to theatre including The Drunkard (Samuel Beckett Centre), A Life (Moat Theatre, Naas), and Never Look in the Mirror When You're Dancing (Dublin Fringe Festival). Lianne has stage-managed with theatre companies such as Barabbas The Company and Complex Productions, in addition to previous stagings of Act Without Words II with Company SJ. She has also been a director; her most recent credits include Romeo & Juliet and the Merchant of Venice. Lianne holds a Masters in Directing from University College Dublin