Theatre & Dance at Kilkenny Arts Festival

About the Curator

Tom is Associate Director of Rough Magic, and a co-founder and joint Artistic Director of Playgroup. He studied English and Philosophy at UCC, and trained as a director on Rough Magic’s SEEDS programme and at the National Theatre Studio, London. Directing credits for Rough Magic include Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer, Life is a Dream, Attempts on her Life (for which he was nominated for Best Director at the 2007 Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards), Dream of Autumn, and 4.48 Psychosis as part of the SEEDS 2 showcase. He has directed all of Playgroup’s productions to date: Say Hi To The Rivers And The Mountains, The Heights, The Art of Swimming, The Train Show, Dark Week, Soap!, Crave and Integrity. He has also worked for the Abbey Theatre, Calipo, Blue Raincoat, Dublin Theatre Festival, Making Strange, Samuel Beckett Centre, Once Off Productions, Tobacco Factory Bristol, Dublin Youth Theatre, Activate Youth Theatre and Meridian, and is on the board of the Dublin Fringe Festival and the Association of Theatre Directors Ireland.

Theatre & Dance Programme

For my fourth and final year curating the theatre and dance programme for Kilkenny Arts Festival, I am delighted to invite six of the most important Irish theatre and dance companies to present a range of new and innovative work, as well as some very exciting visitors from New York.

Festival favourites Gare St Lazare Players Ireland take a break from touring the world to return to the Festival with a new play by rising American playwright Will Eno, Title and Deed, written especially for the company. Una McKevitt, who made a great impact at last year's Festival with Victor and Gord, takes a moving and candid look at the experience of gender reassignment in The Big Deal. And Cork's site-specific pioneers Corcadorca make their first visit to the Festival with Request Programme, a remarkable and intimate wordless show performed in an apartment and starring leading Irish actress Eileen Walsh.

One of the smash hit companies of last year's Festival, ponydance, return to charm the knickers off the people of Kilkenny with their new show Anybody Waitin'?. Irish Modern Dance Theatre return to the Festival with a thrilling new work, Body Duet, and Fearghus Ó Conchúir makes his Festival debut with Tabernacle, a beautiful and provocative new work about the Irish body and the Catholic Church.

To complete the line-up, I’m thrilled to welcome one of my favourite companies from New York, Banana Bag & Bodice, with the European premiere of their wildly-entertaining reimagining of Beowulf as a rock and roll cabaret.

Come along, open your hearts and minds, and tell us what you think!

View the Theatre & Dance Programme