About the International Mentorship

Thanks to a Resource Sharing grant from the Arts Council of Ireland, Pan Pan engaged Viviane De Muynck, one of the principle actors and collaborators with Needcompany, to work as a mentor with five artists developing ideas for performance projects.

In addition to having a series of engagements with Viviane, each selected artist received a bursary to help them dedicate time to working on their ideas.

This was the second year of the International Mentorship programme, which Pan Pan initiated in 2012 with director Kirsten Dehlhom of Hotel Pro Forma as the mentor.

Mentor

Viviane De Muynck is best-known as one of the principal actresses in Needcompany – she began working with artistic director Jan Lauwers since 1993 and has performed in, and collaborated on, much of the company’s work since then.

In general, Viviane is interested in exploring different approaches to the use of text in performance, particularly under cross-disciplinary influences – e.g. free jazz, multimedia etc.

Viviane works internationally as a guest lecturer on theatre courses and workshops, and is also a prolific film and television actor.

Needcompany is an artists’ company set up by the theatre-maker and artist Jan Lauwers and the choreographer Grace Ellen Barkey in 1986. Since the very beginning, Needcompany has presented itself as an international, multilingual, innovative and multidisciplinary company. This diversity is reflected best in the ensemble itself, in which on average 7 different nationalities are represented. Over the years Needcompany has put increasing emphasis on this ensemble. The close group of performers Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey have collected around them is part of the long-term vision Needcompany has in view. While with Needcompany, the performers are given the opportunity to develop or examine their own personal artistic work.

Participants

Thomas Conway – a dramaturg who is developing an idea linking such icons as John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, Mohammed Ali, Rudolf Nureyev and Elizabeth Bishop in a performance that gives audience the chance to experience the sensuality of reading.

Lynnette Moran – an interdisciplinary artist who explores layers of transmission and broadcast in ‘live’ performance work, she’s developing a new work interrogating the notions of terror, crisis and innocence in relation to our current socio-political state.

Bush Moukarzel – the artistic director of Dead Centre. He wrote ‘Souvenir’ about Proust, ‘(S)quark!’ about Joyce, and is writing Lippy with cameo-author Mark O Halloran about no one. Beckett’s First Play: Not-Eleutheria is the title of his mentorship project.

Dick Walsh – a theatre maker interested in staging anecdotes. This proposal will be specifically looking at war stories.

Louise White – a performance maker who is developing an ambitious, site-specific work entitled Mother You; a proposed performance event for a large disused commercial building in Dublin’s City Centre.