Reveal — PrimeCut Productions

REVEAL Artists 2023 - 25

Prime Cut are delighted to announce the continuation of our dynamic partnership with Jerwood Arts, the arts council of Northern Ireland and the Foyle Foundation delivering the ground-breaking Arts Development programme Reveal for its third iteration. This programme aims to underpin the future of live performance in Northern ireland sharing resources and skills, providing mentorship and opportunities for next generation artists. Previous Reveal Artist’s work developed in the programme include Oisin Kearney and Michael Patrick’s The Border Game, Fionnuala Kennedy’s award winning play Removed and Oona Doherty’s internationally acclaimed Hard To Be Soft.

we are delighted to welcome a new cohort of reveal artists joining katie richardson and dominic montague - associate producer ronan mcmanus, director emily foran and choreographer and dancer michael mcevoy. these five artists will spend the next two years exploring their practice, expanding their artistic horizons and making thrilling new work.

RONAN MCMANUS

REVEAL ASSOCIATE PRODUCER 2023-25

Ronan is a Theatre Maker based in Belfast. Originally from Omagh, he studied Drama at Queen’s University, Belfast where he was also President of Queen’s University Players. Since graduating, he has been working in the industry as a technical, stage and production manager, working extensively with companies such as Bruiser Theatre Company and Big Telly Theatre Company. He also recently worked with Prime Cut as Technical Stage Manager on The Border Game Tour. Ronan is particularly interested in bringing high-quality professional theatre to under-represented communities and supporting emerging artists and is very excited to begin working with Prime Cut where he can continue to strive for this on a larger scale.

Emily Foran

REVEAL ARTIST 2023-25

Emily is a freelance director for theatre and film based in Belfast and trained at The Lir Academy Dublin. Her work spans across the island of Ireland, working with Druid Theatre after receiving the Marie Mullen Bursary, as well as The Lyric, The MAC, An Grianán Theatre, The New Theatre, Dublin and Greenshoot Productions. Her recent work includes Northern Ireland Screen-funded short film BAD VIBES, which she wrote and directed, which premiered at this year’s Belfast Film Festival. Recent credits also include The Dead Letter Office by Mary-Lou McCarthy in association with The Everyman Cork; returning as guest director for Dancing at Lughnasa at The Lir Academy; The Half Moon by Alice Malseed with Greenshoot Productions; REVVED by Patrick Quinn at An Grianán Theatre and The Lyric. Emily was also a resident Hatch and Scratch Artist at the MAC with The Movement Collective and was one of Big Telly Theatre Company’s Early Career Artists.

Michael McEvoy

REVEAL ARTIST 2023-25

Michael is a dance researcher and theatre maker. Specialising in contemporary dance, performance and choreology. A graduate from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (2019) Michael has spent recent years working across the island of Ireland and UK as a performer with companies such as RWD & Maiden Voyage. Michael is looking forward to being apart of the Reveal program and continuing making new pieces of Contemporary Theatre across Northern Ireland.

Dominic Montague

REVEAL ARTIST 2022-25

Dominic is a theatre maker working across stage, site-specific production, audio drama and film; he has created work with companies across Northern Ireland and internationally; including Kabosh, Big Telly, Archa Divadlo Prague, BCC Writers Room and Outburst Queer Arts Festival. Dominic is passionate about uncovering the hidden stories and mythologies of sites, exploring how we as individuals, and as a society, connect to the spaces we inhabit. He has completed the BBC Writers Room Belfast Voices drama room, undertaken artist residencies with Dublin Theatre Festival and Archa Divadlo, and is the Irish Writer in Residence for OUTing The Past. Dominic holds masters’ degrees from the University of Exeter in Western Esotericism, Queens University Belfast in Arts Management, and has studied the Legal, Ethical and Moral issues in Researching Conflict, Violence and Peace at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.

Katie Richardson

REVEAL ARTIST 2023-25

Katie is a musician, songwriter, composer and facilitator who currently makes her own music under the name Hex Hue. In 2012 she was featured as one of the Irish Times 'Northern Lights' which profiled people changing the face of Northern Ireland in their particular fields. For several years she was a member of Choice nominated ‘Pleasure Beach’ with whom she toured the UK and Ireland. Under several different guises, predominantly ‘Katie and the Carnival’ she has worked and collaborated with musicians such as Foy Vance and Duke Special as well as supporting artists like Van Morrison, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Jesca Hoop, Bell X1, All Saints and many more.

As a composer Katie has worked with many Theatre companies across Ireland. In 2018 she starred in and worked as on-stage musical director in the production of Good Vibrations in The Lyric Theatre and was set to take it on tour in 2020 as musical director and performer before it was cancelled due to Covid-19. In 2015, she composed music for short film 'The Death of a Projectionist' by Oscar nominated and Bafta award winning Out of Orbit Films.

Katie is a passionate creative facilitator who believes in promoting inclusion and encouraging growth, expression and change through the arts and creative industries.

In 2020 Katie launched Shade Music which has become the home for her composition work as well as a base for her work as a creative consultant and curator. Katie recently curated the Creative Hub for the TedX Stormont online event which took place in July 2020.

PREVIOUS REVEAL SUCCESS

Prime Cut’s groundbreaking Artistic Development Programme Reveal has delivered bespoke development plans with, and for some of the most exciting, original and innovative artists working in Northern Ireland.

The programme has enabled artists to attend theatre festivals in Berlin, Ghent, Brussels, London, Paris and Edinburgh, to network and collaborate with peers and engage with renowned theatre practitioners like Andy Smith, Ruth Little and Michael Murfi. The programme has supported the development of Patrick O Reilly’s The Man Who Fell To Pieces, Oona Doherty’s Hard To Be Soft -A Belfast Prayer, Sarah Gordon’s A Sinkhole In Guatemala, Pan Naran’s My Left Nut, Fionuala Kennedy’s That Look and Rhiann Jeffrey’s directorial debut Mydidae. Mentorship and development opportunities have been further enhanced with producing support for Oona Doherty’s International co-production of Hard to Be Soft.

most recently reveal artists Michael Patrick and Oisin Kearney developed their critically acclaimed play the Border game which was co-produced with the lyric theatre, belfast and played in venues across the island. as the programme has evolved we have extended its reach to include theatre production and design. Natalie Murphy and tracy lindsey both successfully finished their production and design internships and are now working extensively in the sector.

+ FIONNUALA KENNEDY

Fionnuala is a playwright theatre-maker living and working in Belfast. Fionnuala’s first play ‘Hostel’ (produced by Kabosh 2011) has toured for three years to a range of hostels, community centres and theatres. This play exploring sheltered accommodation for young families has been commissioned by different organisations including Simon Community NI, First Housing and Welcome Organisation to raise sensitive issues about homelessness and human rights.

Fionnuala was privileged to be writer on ‘Closer’ for Replay Theatre Company, a multi-sensory show for young PMLD audiences (2014). Fionnuala has also written ‘Hatch’ (2013), as part of Accidental Theatre’s ‘Fast & Loose’ Programme. She co-wrote ‘Love For Sale’ (2013), an adaption of Charles Bukowski’s short story ‘Love For Sale $17.50’, as part of the Belfast Book Festival. In 2014, she co-wrote and directed ‘The Glass Bell’ as part of the Pic N Mix Festival, looking at childhood memories of The Troubles. She was also commissioned by Terranova Theatre Company to create a short piece looking at Northern Ireland as a multicultural society, for their ‘Arrivals’ project. Fionnuala’s play ‘Hatchet’, explored racism and homophobia in Belfast and was told by a young black Belfast teenager (2015).
For Kabosh Theatre company she has directed ‘Shankill Stories’ by Seth Linder, ‘Collecting Cultures’ by Carlo Gebler and Rosemary Jenkinson, and ‘Wonderwall’ by Rosemary Jenkinson, a cross-community performance project with young people, staged at the North Howard Street peacewall. Fionnuala is currently developing a piece called ‘Entitled’ looking at the impact and inequality of welfare cuts.

+ OONA DOHERTY

Oona Doherty is a Dance Artist based in Northern Ireland. Oona Studied at The London School Of Contemporary Dance, University of Ulster and LABAN London. BA Honours and Post Graduate in Contemporary Dance Studies. She has been performing Dance Theatre internationally since 2010. With Companies such as :TRASH (NL) Abbattoir Ferme (BE) Veronika Riz (IT) Emma Martin /United Fall (IE) Enda Walsh (UK).

Awards Include: 2016 The MAC Theatre Belfast HATCH Artist

2016/17 A prime Cut Productions REVEAL Artist

2017/18 Maison La Dans Associate Artist Lyon

2017/19 Lu Briquetterie Associate Artist Paris

Winner of the Major individual award from the Arts council 2017 for her new work Hard to be Soft - A Belfast Prayer. www.hardtobesoft.com

+ sarah gordon

Sarah Gordon is a Belfast based artist and maker. She studied at Dublin's NCAD and Hochschule Luzern. She received graduate residency awards from Blackchurch Print Studio and Belfast Print Workshop. She has completed residencies in Canada, Mexico and Texas, and an internship with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She works in theatre and film.

Sarah's first play A Sinkhole in Guatemala premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Stewart Parker Award.

+ RHIANN JEFFREY

Rhiann is a Freelance Theatre Director, and an Associate Director for Prime Cut Productions. She started working with the company in 2014 when she was awarded a BBC Arts Fellowship to be mentored by Director Emma Jordan. Since then, Rhiann has assisted Jordan on several shows, including; ‘God of Carnage’ by Yazmina Reza, ‘After Miss Julie’ by Patrick Marber and ‘Red’ by John Logan. Rhiann also directed her debut production, ‘Mydidae’ by Jack Thorne, for the company in 2015. Other directing credits for Prime Cut include; ‘Everyday I Wake Up Hopeful,’ a new play by John Patrick Higgins, and ‘Pulse,’ a community production as part of Ensemble NI.

Recent Freelance Directing credits include; ‘Borderland’ by Andrew Doyle for Soda Bread Theatre Company, a rehearsed reading of ‘Northern Star’ by Stewart Parker for Kabosh Theatre Company, ‘Hansel and Gretel' by Stephen Beggs and Simon Magill, for The Mac Theatre, ‘Kafka’s Monkey’ by Colin Teevan for the Lyric Theatre, the International tour of ‘Both Sides’ by Jane Coyle and an all-female production of ‘Macbeth’ for Queen’s 2nd year students. Rhiann will be directing ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell for Waterford Youth Arts in August and is also currently working on her own project ‘Izola’ about the Roma communities in Belfast, funded by Arts Council NI.

+ CAOILEANN CURRY-THOMPSON

Caoileann is a Belfast-based theatre-maker and playwright. She has worked in theatre in various roles for nearly 20 years: as an actor, facilitator, stage manager, teacher and academic researcher. Alongside her writing, she teaches Drama at Queen's and worked as a dramaturg (including on Prime Cut's Red, winner of the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production). She has a PhD on the theatre of Stewart Parker; her research focused on Parker's use of performativity and theatricality to interrogate versions of our shared past and to envision potential new versions of the future.

The theatre which she creates is shaped by her perspective as a mother of three young children, a partner, a daughter, and part-time carer for a parent with dementia. She is originally from Newcastle, County Down, studied in Dublin and Belfast, and lived in Oxford for ten years before returning to Belfast in 2016.

As part of the REVEAL programme I am developing a play which explores the role of literature, poetry and language in the generation of the sense of self and our understanding of our past. It plays with poetry and language in performance to explore the destructive effects of dementia and the fortifying and sustaining power of language.

+ Patrick J O'Reilly

Patrick trained at the Le Coq International school in Paris and is an award winning writer and Artistic Director of Tinderbox in Belfast.

Theatre Credits include:

Puckoon; Gulliver; One Sandwich short of a Genius; (Big Telly Theatre Company) Damage (Out Burst Festival 2014)
Cabaret (MAC theatre) The Nose, Irish Tour (Bruiser theatre company) Hatch, adventures of the Ugly Duck (The MAC 2013) The Conquest of Happiness; World Premiere, (Prime Cut Productions;Directed by Emma Jordan.) Wobble (Irish Arts Centre NYC, Replay Theatre) Assault Events; The Comedy of Errors; (Lyric Theatre) Wobble; Replay/ Assault Events,Hecuba (Kings College London) The Jungle Book ( Movement Director, Lyric Theatre) The Resistible Rise of Arturo ui, Oh what a lovely war!, (Candide) Lady Windermeres Fan and The Canterbury Tales (Bruiser Theatre Company) The Hypochondriac- t, Bah, Humbug! (At the Lyric Theatre Belfast) Midsummer night’s dream (Creation Theatre Company Oxford) Carnival (Kabosh) Macbeth (Replay Productions).

In 2010 Patrick was awarded the Stewart Parker BBC Radio Drama Award for The Weein with Red Lemon Productions.

He has directed The Man Who Fell to Pieces, Ignition and What We’re Made Of, Hubert and the Yes Sock and Famla for Tinderbox Theatre Company.