PLAYWRIGHT
Darren Donohue is an award-winning Irish playwright and poet. His plays have been produced in Dublin, London, Edinburgh, Barcelona, Milan, Prague, Baltimore, Washington DC and New York.
Darren’s plays and readings for the Abbey Theatre include Home Game, El Paso, The Barkhausen Effect, Home-from-Home. Other plays include, Dayshift (Tramedautore Theatre Festival – Milan, Festival on the Crisis PIIGS – Barcelona), Voices in the Rubble (Rapid Lemon Productions, Baltimore), Tuesday Evening (following the news) (Fishamble), A Bucket Full of Fire (Sheer Tantrum/Pandora), The Bird Trap (Three Streets Theatre Company), Keep the Home Fires Burning (Comedians Theatre Company) Revelations, Propelled Upright (Dublin Fringe Festival) Waitin 4 Johno (Crooked House), Bedlam (Dublin Theatre Festival). ‘Dual Cats with One Crayfish’ recently received a staged reading at Irish Repertory Theatre (NYC). ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks’ will receive a staged reading at the Keegan Theatre (Washington DC) in 2018.
His plays are published by the Irish Theatre Institute, Stagescripts UK and New Island Drama. Darren’s poetry was nominated for a Hennessy Literary Award in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
DIRECTOR
Hazel Doolan was a graduate of Performing Arts at IT Sligo in 2015. She found herself at home in the works of Wilde, Chekhov and Shakespeare while inspired by the practices of Stella Adler and Stanislavski. Hazel performed in Sligo’s rustic theatre scene including performances in Bob Kelly’s The Big Wall and while making appearances on Hardy Bucks Season Three.
She made her debut in Galway theatre as Mrs Eynsford Hill in Pygmalion, which staged November 2016. As Co-founder of Eva’s Echo Theatre Company she wrote, directed and played Caroline in the award-winning Match in July 2017. Hazel played Yasmine in an exciting dramatic play The Way It Is by Donna Hoke at the O’Donoughe Centre for Drama,Theatre and Performance in February 2018 while also co starring as Michelle in Jungle Door during the Where We Are Now LGBT+ Theatre Festival 2018, this production was revisited when produced for Galway audiences during this years Galway Community Pride. Hazel continues to write independent works.
CAST ( Mr. Day)
Conor O’Dwyer is a screen and stage actor from Galway who will play the leading role Mr.Day. He has acted on the stage since his fourth class’s production of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlet’ and performed in ‘All Shook Up’, ‘Grease’, ‘Fame’ and ‘The Addam’s Family’ with Performing Arts School Galway (PASG) and in Galway Youth Theatre’s and Decadent’s ‘Midsummer’ and ‘The Dead School’ plays as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Galway Arts Festivals respectively and has completed grades 1-12 and the pre-diploma with Ailbhe Garvey’s School of Speech and Drama.
Conor has since pursued his passion for film and television, graduating from Bow Street’s Academy for Screen Acting in 2017. He has appeared in a number of short films including Maria Doyle-Kennedy’s ‘A Different Kind of Day’ which premiered at the Galway Film Festival in 2017 as well as Oonagh Kearney’s ‘Five Letters…’ which will premier at the Cork Film Festival 2018. His most recent gig was a dayplayer role on BBC’s upcoming drama, ‘The Dublin Murders’, premiering in 2019.
CAST ( Miss List, The Woman, Cleaner, Man 1)
Rena Bryson is a Galway based theatre maker. After graduating from Performing Arts at IT Sligo BA (Hons) Rena worked as an actor in the West of Ireland in productions including Bob Kelly’s The Big Wall, Dark Daughter Productions & Costume Hire’s Mother Loss, The Rabbit’s Riot Theatre Company’s Welcome to Wonderland and NoRopes Theatre Company’s Flash Theatre.
Now based in Galway she is the co-founder of Eva’s Echo Theatre Company and has recently completed a master’s degree in Theatre and Drama at NUI Galway. Rena assistant directed and performed in the company’s first production Match. The team received the Galway Fringe Best Emerging Artists Award 2017 for the production.
Rena directed the company’s second production The Way It Is by Donna Hoke which premiered in the O’Donoghue Centre in February. Most recently she performed in Jungle Door, a play she wrote for it’s original staging in Sligo as part of this year’s Where We Are Now LGBT+ Theatre Festival. This production was shared with Galway audiences as part Galway Community Pride in August.
Currently Rena is directing a devised performance with Eastside Community Drama, working as the PR Manager for Calamity Theatre and enjoying playing interesting and hilarious characters during Dayshift rehearsals.
CAST ( John, Bell, The Janitor, Cleaner, Man 1)
Rickie O’Neill is an actor and musician from Co. Mayo who will play Mr.Bell, John and the Janitor among others in Dayshift.
Since 2012 Rickie has been touring and playing extensively around the world with The Saw Doctors as their full time drummer. In early 2013 Rickie was cast in a supporting role in a McDonald’s commercial and in 2015 he had the privilege of being cast in Once The Musical that did a sold out summer run in The Olympia Theatre in Dublin followed by a sold out 7 week run in Seoul South Korea. The show ran again during the summers of 2016 and 2017 and during those couple of years Rickie had the pleasure of being the voice for several TV ad campaigns such as the GAA, Electric Ireland and Transport For Ireland as well as playing supporting roles on the TV shows Red Rock and Can’t Cope Won’t Cope.
He also tours Germany frequently with a Dublin theatre group called The Wilde Shamrock Touring Theatre which is a specialised theatre group devoted to educating young people through drama, music, interactive games and history.
CAST ( Cathy, The Secretary, Cleaner, Man 3)
Sarah Jane Woods graduated from DIT’s Conservatory of Music and Drama with a degree in Drama Performance in 2017. She has since trained with Thomas Prattki at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA). She is passionate about creating new work with a focus on physical theatre and has a keen interest in commedia dell’arte and clowning.
In February of this year, she made her directorial debut with ‘Everything on Paper’ as part of Smock Alley’s Scene + Heard festival. Sarah Jane is currently completing an MA in Theatre Practice and Production in NUIG and is delighted to be part of Eva’s Echo’s production of Dayshift.
CAST ( Mr.Olive, The Receptionist, Mr. Rivendale, Mr. Creme, Man 2)
Mícheál Ó Fearraigh is a recently graduated student of NUI Galway. There he was an active member of NUIG Dramsoc appearing in The Nightman Cometh as Charlie and in Rhinoceros as Mr Boeuf, as well as featuring in the Rock Society’s first musical Starboy in the title role and appeared in the short films with Aqua Profunda and Can’t Candle This for the FIlm Society.
DESIGN/STAGE MANAGMENT
Sabrina Kelleher is an actor and designer based in Galway. She has studied and been working in theatre and film for the past 3 years. She has studied acting with David Scott in the Applied Art of Acting full-time course and Acting & Theatre Performance in GCC, where she developed a love of production design. Since 2016, Sabrina has been working very closely with the Theatre Room Galway acting in, writing and directing short plays. During her time with Theatre Room, she worked with many creative minds to bring about the best performance they could each month.
She owes many of her design credits to Theatre Room, from costume and makeup to set and sound design. In 2017, she won Best Production Design for “When the Stars Fall”, which she also directed. She has also designed sets for “Tastes Like Chicken” and costumes for “Sucker”, all part of Theatre Room. Sabrina has worked as a production designer and hair & makeup artist for various films and sketches with Project Spatula. Last August, she was one of the hair & makeup designers for Project Spatula’s feature film which is set to be released later this year. She was the production designer for one of Project Spatula’s short sketches, “Mianach”.
Earlier this year, Sabrina made her debut with Eva’s Echo as the set designer for Jungle Door which was part of the Where We Are Now Festival in May and revived as part of Galway Pride in August. Dayshift will take a contrasting design concept to Jungle Door as the use of colour will be a lot more limited. Her goal is to create a visual spectacle on stage and help bring both the director’s and writer’s worlds to life visually on stage.
Sabrina is very excited to be working with Eva’s Echo Theatre Company again and hopes to continue working with them in the future.
Lighting/sound design
Elizabeth Flaherty is a passionate theatre and film maker. She is an actress, writer and director. She has been acting and performing for over 10 years. She studied Acting and Theatre Performance in Galway Community College. She then trained in Advanced Acting and Musical Theatre with Bull Alley Theatre Company based in Dublin. She has an Associate Diploma in Performing Speech and Drama from Trinity College London.
Elizabeth has performed in many musicals, plays and films. Some of her theatre credits include Kate in ‘That Same Old Story’. Prince Edward in ‘Henry VI Part III’, Peg in ‘The Way of the World’ and Felicity Cunningham in ‘The Real Inspector Hound’. She has performed with Macnas, NoRopes Theatre Company, Meaney Productions, Espresso Productions, Waking the Feminists West, City Morgue Films, CATAGOGO Collective and numerous musical societies.
She also starred in two plays as part of Where We Are Now LGBT+ Theatre Festival in 2017 and returned to the festival in 2018 as the director of Jungle Door. She was the leading lady in Eva’s Echo Theatre Company’s first production ‘Match’, as part of the Galway Fringe Festival which won the Fringe award for Best Emerging Artists and is delighted to be working with this wonderful company again.
Directing credits include ‘First Dates’ with Amigo Productions at the Town Hall Theatre Galway. She also directed and starred in a children’s Theatre Production over ‘Longwing and June’ with the Galway Fringe Festival in 2017.
Elizabeth is also a successful writer. She has written many plays that were produced and performed in Galway. She was chosen as a playwright to present a piece of her work at the 2017 Notions Festival ( in association with An Ait Eile) for Theatre: Represent, which aimed to present new work that tackles issues not often addressed within theatre and plays. She was truly honoured to receive the Best Writer Comedy award at the 2017 Theatre Room Awards.
She is a longstanding member of The Theatre Room Galway and worked on a number of productions as an actor, writer and director. She is currently on the Theatre Room Committee as their PR Officer since 2016.
Most recently Elizabeth played the Kings Costumier the ‘The Young King’ with Slingsby Theatre at this year’s Baboro International Arts Festival for Children.
Eva's Echo 