2023
10th International Mentorship with Susanne Kennedy
Photo by Ingo Höhn
About the International Mentorship
From January to June 2023, Susanne Kennedy worked with five contemporary performing arts makers based in Ireland. This mentorship programme is a unique opportunity for theatre and performance makers to develop an early-stage idea for performance, outside the pressures of production. The engagement of the mentor is aimed to pose challenges and offer interrogations within a supportive structure.
In addition to meeting Susanne over a series of encounters online and in person in Dublin (as Covid-19 restrictions allow), each of the participants received a bursary to help them dedicate time to work on their ideas. Participants were also offered a travel subsidy to help them see relevant work internationally.
The Pan Pan International Mentorship is funded by the Arts Council. The Goethe Institut and the Gate Theatre are mentorship partners.
“The mentorship gave me confidence in myself and in the idea. It was a comfortable place for testing out ideas on someone whose honesty I could trust, and as a fledgling maker that has led to growth in my way of thinking and working."
MEET THE MENTOR
Photo by Christian Knorr
Susanne Kennedy is a theatre director whose singular aesthetic and approach introduce a fresh current to male-centric perspectives that ground Western theatre.
In her works, distorted by masks, playback dialogue, doppelgängers and multimedia, the actors confront the audience with the question: what does it mean to be human? Susanne Kennedy lives and works as a theatre director and artist in Berlin. Together with the visual artist Markus Selg she explores the boundaries between man and machine. In their theatre works they set up situations where reality and simulation become blurred. Together they create theater installations, opera happenings and exhibitions.
MEET THE PARTICIPANTS
Fiona Breen
As a devisor and performer Fiona Breen’s practice flexes between ecology, autobiography and history.
Her recent performance work includes Gull (Dublin Fringe Festival, 2022) and Root (Dublin Theatre Festival, 2021), which she devised alongside her daughter, Shanna May Breen.
In 2019 Fiona composed The Meadow, a site specific soundscape in Birr Workhouse Graveyard, Co. Offaly.
Currently Fiona is working on My brother, your sisters, a new solo performance about her missing brother Peter.
Choy-Ping Clarke-Ng 吳彩萍
Choy-Ping Clarke-Ng 吳彩萍 (they / she) is a Hong Kong-Irish theatre maker and Linbury Prize-winning designer.
They have designed for venues including the Abbey Theatre, Bristol Old Vic and Singapore Repertory Theatre.
Their most recent piece of theatre making WINDOW A WORLD was co-produced by Dublin Theatre Festival and BUDA Belgium.
Sara Joyce
Sara is a director/writer who recently directed THE LAST RETURN for Druid.
Sara was selected for the 2021 National Theatre director’s course, is a graduate of Old Vic 12, was Resident Director at Almeida and Soho Theatres.
She studied Drama and Theatre at Trinity College and trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq.
Lauren Moukarzel
Lauren Moukarzel is a playwright working at the intersection of text and technology.
Past work: Rescue Annie (2021), Fetch (2019), Viva Voce (2018) in Dublin Fringe Festival. She was an Abbey Works initiative playwright in 2019 and trained on The Lir Academy’s MFA playwriting programme 2017/18.
Jack Rogers
Jack Rogers is a multi-disciplinary artist from Co. Louth working primarily within the industries of performance, puppetry and set design.
His practice is currently concerned with his relationship to queerness, masculinity, and the rural identity.
JESSICA - Photo by Julian Röder
Einstein on the Beach - Photo by Ingo Höhn
ULTRAWORLD - Photo by Julian Röder