Director Lianne O’Shea has been awarded Druid Theatre’s 2025 Marie Mullen Bursary, an annual award for female theatre artists working in Ireland in design, directing and dramaturgy. Named in honour of actor and Druid co-founder, Marie Mullen, and in its seventh year, the bursary supports the professional development of women in the business.

Lianne was a Resident Director at the Abbey Theatre last year when she assisted Lynne Parker on her production of Children of the Sun on the main stage. She also recently directed a showing of short plays on the Abbey Peacock stage as part of the Fighting Words Playwriting Programme.

Recent work includes PLAY, an intimate site-responsive exploration of Hamlet. This multidisciplinary presentation was made in collaboration with the community drama group resident in Kildare’s Moat Theatre for the last 70 years. In 2022 she presented an earlier strand of her Hamlet exploration, This House is Elsinore.

Lianne who has a Master’s in Directing for Theatre from UCD, will have various paid work opportunities with Druid in the coming year, including being Assistant Director on the company’s Arts Festival double bill of Riders to the Sea by JM Synge and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  She will also get a stipend, receive mentoring, access to workshops and other artist development programmes in the company, primarily the residency programme, FUEL, and Druid Debuts.

Druid also announced the artists that have been chosen for the 2025 FUEL residency. FUEL, which has been running since 2014, is available to people living in the West of Ireland and has supported more than 35 artists.

This year’s artists are Mayo-based Caomhnú Creative (Alice Kinsella and Daniel Wade), Aoife Delany Reade, Martin Kenny and Eoin Ó Dubhghaill.

They will create new theatre pieces during the nine-month programme, which will include mentorship, workshops, residency periods, a showcase event, networking events, and advice on funding and producing.

The multimedia Caomhnú Creative collective  was founded in 2024 by Alice Kinsella and Daniel Wade. The duo’s book, 2024’s Wake of the Whale was a Sunday Independent Book of the Year and during FUEL, they will develop it as a multimedia theatre piece, telling the story of the whaling stations which operated on the Mullet peninsula in the early 20th century. Incorporating theatre, music, poetry and digital art..

Tipperary playwright Aoife Delany Reade lives in Galway. She has worked with Galway Theatre Festival and Baboró Festival, and is a trained facilitator with Youth Theatre Ireland. During FUEL, Aoife will develop When All The World Is Quiet, a three-person monologue, written in poetic rhyme that imagines a version of Ireland that was never colonised, asking questions about identity, colonialism, environmentalism, and the role of mythology and folklore.

City man Martin Kenny is currently completing a PhD in Drama and Theatre Studies, A Haunted State: Queer Cultural Memory and Performance in Ireland, at the University of Galway. He recently published a chapter in the Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Irish Writing. Martin began performing at 17, as a member of the Young Chorus in Druid’s production of Seán O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie. He has also performed with Macnas and Galway Theatre Festival and previously received a theatre directing mentorship from Fishamble. He will develop The Haunted Cabaret, a blend of theatre and live music about the lives and afterlives of Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory and WB Yeats, during the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre (1899-1901).

Previous work from Conamara man Eoin Ó Dubhghaill includes Baoite and Branar’s The Table, both at the Abbey Theatre. He also featured in 12.37 at London’s Finborough Theatre and How To Catch a Star by Branar at London’s Polka Theatre. Last year, he collaborated with Scots Gaelic and Welsh theatre-makers on the trilingual show Taigh/Ty/Teach. It toured to sold-out houses in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Eoin’s radio play Rún, about the myth of the O’Connell family and the seals of Conamara, won first prize at Gradam Joe Steve Ó Neachtain in 2020, and was broadcast on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. During his FUEL residency, Eoin will develop Rún for the stage.

The Druid Debuts play-reading series and its New Writing programme will also take place this year.

The Debuts have been moved from their normal Arts Festival slot and will run in the winter after the company return from staging Samuel Beckett’s Endgame in New York.

Throughout the year, Druid will host a local writing group led by Tuam playwright whose debut play Helen and I was produced by the company in 2016.

Pictured: Lianne O’Shea, this year’ s recipient of the Marie Mullen Bursary, pictured outside Druid’s Mick Lally Theatre. PHOTO: ANITA MURPHY.