MAKE: Mentors and Participants for 2020 Residency

The 12th edition of the MAKE residency takes place online all this week, January 11-15.

We're delighted to have a wonderful group of artists joining the residency along with our fantastic mentors, some of whom are MAKE veterans. Our mentors for 2021 MAKE residency are Andy Field, Mojca Jug and Ragnheiður Skúladóttir.

Andy Field is an artist, writer and curator based in London. He has created performance work on his own and with a variety of collaborators since 2007. Most recently Andy created A Rain Walk for 2020 edition of Dublin Fringe Festival with Becky Darlington. Andy creates formally unusual projects that invite us to consider our relationships both to the spaces we inhabit and the people around us. A key strand of Andy’s practice involves making work in collaboration with young people, with the aim of enabling children to meaningfully participate in the civic discourse of the cities and towns in which they live.

Mojca Jug is a curator with Bunker and Mladi Ievi festival in Ljubljana. Her programming work extends beyond Bunker and is invited as a curator and programmer to numerous festivals and platforms. She was also the executive director of production house Fičo balet (2003 – 2005) and is producing a cycle of contemporary piano concert by Milko Lazar, as well coordinating a jazz program in Café Repete, Ljubljana.

She lives and works in Ljubljana.

Ragnheiður Skúladóttir was born and raised in Reykjavík. Following her studies in theatre and multimedia in the US she moved to New York City where she lived and worked for four years. In 2000, following a 13 year stint in the U.S, she moved back to Reykjavík to become Dean of Department of Theatre and Dance at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. In 2008 she co-founded the LÓKAL International Theatre Festival, an annual event that presents new local and international work in the field of theatre and performance. She was artistic director of the Akureyri City Theatre from 2012 to 2015 and manager of Iceland Dance Company 2016-2019. She is currently the director of Festspillene i Nord-Norge / Arctic Arts Festival.

Our 2021 MAKE participants are artists working both individually and in groups, they include:
Osaro Azams,
Dan Colley,
Cal Folger Day,
Lauren Jones,
Sinéad Keogh,
Colm McCready,
Julie Morrissy,
Chinedum Muotto
Fiona Linnane, Shirley Keane, Triona Walsh
Liam McCarthy, Duffy Mooney, Darren Yorke
Eva O’Connor, Ciara Ní Éanachain

Osaro Azams is a Nigerian woman who started out living in Ireland as an asylum seeker. Sixteen years later, with a background in Community Development, performing and with an Irish Citizenship, she enjoys organising social events through her group Fried Plantains Collective as a way to get to know the people in her city. Osaro has recently produced SLAY WEREWOLF SLAY! (2020) and two sold-out gigs 'BLACK JAM' (2019) at Dublin Fringe Festival and performed 'Soapbox' at the Irish Writer Centre's for Culture Night 2018. Previously, she has performed at THISISPOPBABY's sold out show "Mouth Of A Shark", a play about the similarities between gay foreigners who seek safety in Ireland, and Irish people who leave out of fear.

Dan Colley is a theatre maker with a particular focus on devised ensemble work, theatre-for-young-audiences and outdoor spectacle. For seven years he was director of Collapsing Horse theatre directing several productions including A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings which was nominated for four Dublin Fringe Festival awards in 2019. Dan has also directed Me Michael, and a short piece as part of Fourteen Voices From a Bloodied Field for the Abbey Theatre and Danse Macabre, a large-scale processional street theatre piece for Macnas. Dan was awarded the Arts Council's Next Generation Bursary Award in 2016, he is theatre artist in Residence in the Riverbank and is a member of the Project Arts Centre.

Cal Folger Day is an American composer and performer based in Dublin. In 2020 she made ZOONOSIS, a new commissioned musical for Dublin Youth Theatre, directed by Tom Creed. The Woods and Grandma, a verbatim pop-opera about Lady Gregory, won the Little Gem award in the 2017 Dublin Fringe Festival, and an RTÉ Lyric FM documentary on the piece was nominated for the Prix Italia, Prix Europa, and New York Radio Festivals. A live studio soundtrack was mixed and mastered by Forest Christenson (Dunkirk, Blade Runner). It has also been produced in Coole Park, Galway for Culture Night and at the Dunsink Observatory as part of the Festival of Curiosity. As a songwriter, Cal has performed with Angel Olsen, Jeffrey Lewis, St. Lenox, and the comedian Jena Friedman.

Lauren Jones is a writer and theatre-maker. She makes work using technological conceits to deepen audience immersion and interrogate the meaning of the performing body onstage. Viva Voce (Dublin Fringe Festival 2018, nominated for a Fishamble New Writing award) cast an animated light sculpture as the second performer in a solo show. Fetch (Dublin Fringe Festival 2019) used binaural technology as a transportation device to tell a story about travel in the anthropocene. Lauren is currently working on a DUETS project with Eoghan Carrick for 2021 examining the divorce of self from image in the digital age. Lauren's work in print has been published by The Irish Times, IMAGE magazine, Banshee literary journal, Rogue Collective, and The Dublin Review.

Sinéad Keogh is an emerging multimedia performance installation artist and curator. Keogh balances ideologies of intensification of the senses leading to immersive and often emotional experiences communicated through dance, character performance and synched video to sound. The core of these experiences lies between simultaneous storytelling and experimental abstraction exuding surreal fantasy. Catalysts for Keogh's practice include the Irish landscape, Greek mythology, folklore and queer feminist histories. Keogh has exhibited in Dublin and internationally in New York, Italy and New Zealand. Keogh is also the founder, director and curator of Soul Noir: Festival of the Dark Arts (2017 – present).

Colm McCready is an actor based in County Antrim who trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, Lyric Drama Studio, and Queen’s University Belfast where he was the recipient of the Sir Tyrone Guthrie Award. His theatre credits include Stand Up Guy (No Touching Theatre Festival), Queen Margaret, Speed the Plow, Mosquitoes (Mountview), Dark of the Moon, Doctor Scroggy’s War (Lyric Theatre Belfast). Television credits include BBC's My Left Nut, and The Windermere Children. Currently, he is developing Werking Title, a queer clowning lip-sync extravaganza with creative partner Alex Powell, debuting at the NEON Festival 2021 (Southwark Playhouse). 

Julie Morrissy is a poet, academic, and critic from Dublin. Her collaborative, mixed-media practice includes animation, moving image, and performance. She is the John Pollard Newman Fellow in Creativity at University College Dublin. Her first collection Where, the Mile End (2019) is published by Book*hug (Canada) and tall-lighthouse (UK). She is a recipient of the Arts Council Next Generation Award, and her work has been published in The Manchester Review, Irish Times, Winter Papers, Poetry Ireland Review, and exhibited in the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, 2020. 

Chinedum Muotto - Son of Ngozi Akamelu - Truly, I am my mother’s son. 
(He/She/We) seeks to work with communities globally by using the arts to disrupt the daily narratives around social injustices.  (He/She/We) invites the utilization primarily of voice and body as means through which we as people can re-establish ourselves and respective communities beyond space & time.

In 2019, (He/She/We) have been privileged to showcase our body of works at the Royal Irish Academy as part of The IASIL 2019 panel questioning diversity within the Irish Literary arts, (He/She/We) also secured the Create and Carlow Arts Festival Artist Residency and curated poetry that was featured as part of Black History Month at Facebook Dublin. Previous works have seen (Him/Her/We) work with communities in USA, Germany, Netherland & Ireland, primarily targeting youths, creating spaces to reflect, learn and be otherwise. (He/She/We) has also been commissioned by Facebook Dublin and The Embassy of Ireland (London) respectively to engage with their community of choice and produce creative pieces from those interactions.

Fiona Linnane, Shirley Keane, Triona Walsh
Fiona is a composer specialising in Opera and vocal music. In 2020 she was recipient of the Art Council of Ireland Music Bursary Award.   Current projects include 'No.2 Pery Square', a site responsive opera in collaboration with Limerick based production company Opera Workshop (funded by the Arts Council of Ireland Opera Commissions Award 2020).  She was awarded the Limerick City and County Council Individual Arts Bursary 2018 and 2019, for work in opera and art song.  Works include short operas 'Off Tuskar' and 'Bay of Fundy'; comic arias 'Songs of the Meteorologist' and Art Songs 'Songs from Kate O’Brien' (in collaboration with poet Mary Coll).

Shirley is the founder and artistic director of Limerick based Opera Workshop. Since its inception in 2017, she has written and directed numerous productions that have ranged from collaborative community projects, devised concerts, small regional tours to challenging site-specific works at venues such as the Royal Festival Hall and the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, London.   

In 2020, Shirley produced and directed a number of short filmed opera scenes in association with Limerick based, Honest Arts and is currently leading on the development of the site specific opera ‘No 2 Pery Square’ for a future live production at the landmark, Limerick Civic Trust maintained Georgian House.  

Liam McCarthy, Duffy Mooney and Darren Yorke
Liam McCarthy is a writer and drama facilitator. He has worked, in various capacities, for several theatre companies and festivals in Ireland and abroad. As a playwright, he has participated in Druid Theatre’s FUEL programme, Corcadorca’s SHOW festival, Branar Tiny shows, and “Words, Words, Words” at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. His play Mam and Love and Woo (a commission from Belltable) was recently awarded the Wilde Irish Writer Bursary from Dublin Fringe. Liam works as Engagement and Participation Coordinator at The Ark Children’s Cultural Centre, supporting The Ark team to deliver inclusive and participative arts experiences to children. 

Duffy Mooney-Sheppard is a contemporary visual artist & storymaker who specialises in creating work for and with children. A recent graduate of the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art, she has many years of experience leading arts events, programs and creative workshops for young people. This year, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, she founded Little Islands Online Art Club where she presents weekly stories and art workshops from her studio.

Duffy was awarded the Arts Council Young People, Children and Education Arts Council Bursary and Literature Project Funding to continue to develop and produce innovative artwork and stories for children in 2021.

Darren Yorke is an improviser who enjoys a rich interdisciplinary arts practice (both onstage and behind the scenes). He trained in the Vancouver TheatreSports™ style of improvisation and performed regularly with the company ensemble and is Ireland’s leading member of the International Theatresports™ Institute. More recently, Darren has been sporting several of his favourite hats in Dublin with his company Grand Stretch — delivering life-enhancing impro training, producing directing, and performing in impro shows since 2017. 

Darren’s training includes work abroad with Keith Johnstone, Steen Haakon Hansen & Patti Stiles, Armando Diaz and with the Olivier Award winning SHOWSTOPPER! The improvised musical. Closer to home, he collaborates with Anna Newell on her theatre adventures for young audiences (most recently in BLUE!), and has trained with Theatre Lovett (Theatre for Young Audiences) and Annie Ryan of Corn Exchange (Commedia dell'arte).

Ciara Ní Éanachain and Eva O'Connor
Ciara is spoken word artist, activist, and broadcaster who writes and performs bilingually. She is DCU’s Writer in Residence 2020, and an Irish Writers Centre ambassador. Ciara is the founder of REIC, a monthly multilingual spoken word event. She has performed across Ireland and internationally in New York, London, Brussels, and Sweden. Her work has been published in a variety of journals including Icarus and Comhar and she is a recipient of the Cill Rialaig Residency through Listowel Writers’ Week. She is a cofounder of LGBTQ+ arts collective Aerach.Aiteach.Gaelach, and her first project with the group was selected for The Abbey Theatre’s 5x5 2020.

Eva is a writer and performer from Ogonnelloe Co. Clare. She runs Sunday's Child theatre company with Hildegard Ryan. She makes work for stage, screen and radio. Her plays include My Name is Saoirse, Overshadowed (now a series on BBC Three) Maz and Bricks ( produced by Fishamble and directed by Jim Culleton) Afloat, and MUSTARD (Winner of a Fringe First and the Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe 2019).  

More information on MAKE, the artist development programme and residency initiative of Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Project Arts Centre and Theatre Forum can be found here. It is open to artists for the purpose of generating new performance work outside of the traditional writer-led model at all career levels.