ISTR Webinar - 'Is It Time to Bring Back the Irish Theatre Awards?'

Webinar hosted by the Irish Society For Theatre Research

Esosa Ighodaro is a Nigerian/Irish writer, director and vocalist. She makes work for stage and screen. Her work aims to highlight black talent and tell more varied stories of the black experiences in Ireland, using humour to explore more serious themes. Esosa is a Resident Artist at Axis Arts Centre where she is developing new work over a 3 year residency. She is an Associate Artist with Civic Theatre, Tallaght where her work will focus on supporting more artists of colour to engage with the Irish Arts sector to create new work that speaks to their lived experience. Esosa is a 2024 Resident Director at the Abbey Theatre, where she is engaged in a programme to grow her craft and skillset as theatre director. Esosa’s work for screen has been screened at film festivals across Ireland, US and Southern Africa, winning an audience choice award. Work for TV and film is currently in development.

As a vocalist, Esosa works in a wide range of styles, in particular earning acclaim for her soulful renditions of traditional Irish music – soul ceol! She recorded her debut album You Won’t Believe It after touring extensively as a solo artist as well as a guest and backing vocalist. She has worked with a range of artists from local Gospel Choirs to Stevie Wonder.

Anne Clarke is the founder of the multi-award-winning Landmark Productions, one of Ireland’s leading theatre producers, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. In that time, she has produced 46 plays, three operas and a musical – 33 of which were world premieres. The company’s work has been seen on major stages overseas: at the Barbican, National Theatre and ROH in London; at the Edinburgh International Festival; at St Ann’s Warehouse and BAM, New York; as well as in the West End and on Broadway.

Luke Casserly

I am a multidisciplinary performance maker from Longford, Ireland. My work weaves together ecological research, autobiography, sound art, and site as a way of carving out space for new possibilities to emerge between live performance and physical landscape. My projects have brought audiences through city streets, back gardens, train stations, beaches, and a bog in the Irish Midlands which have led to the creation of a network of wildflower meadows across Ireland (1000 Miniature Meadows, 2020-23), the planting of 1000 indigenous trees (Root, 2021), and the development of an organic perfume made using botanicals from the Irish bog (Distillation, 2023). Often using autobiography as a starting point, my work attempts to stretch out new conversations around our human impact on the environment. I am interested in making work which has a positive environmental legacy beyond the moment of live encounter with an audience. I am driven to create gentle, subversive interventions in response to the climate crisis - and avoid leaning into the anxiety, greenwashing, and didacticism that often revolves around this topic in contemporary society.

In 2023, I was awarded the Arts Council’s Next Generation award. I was recently selected for the Norman Houston Multidisciplinary Commissioning Award with Solas Nua in Washington DC, in addition to being chosen to participate in the International Forum as part of Theatertreffen (Berlin Festspiele) 2023. To date, my work has been presented both nationally and internationally across Ireland, the UK, Canada, USA, and Serbia.

I’m also an experienced facilitator who has worked extensively with a number of organisations including the Ark, Dublin Theatre Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, and the Abbey Theatre to deliver workshops as part of wider community-engagement programmes. I also mentors artists, and have worked as a script reader for both the Abbey Theatre and Druid since 2021. In 2024, I was appointed as a Biodiversity Artist in Residence at Dublin City Council.