CREATIVES

Des Kennedydirector

Directing credits include Piaf at the Gate Theatre, Dublin; Teenage Kicks at the Millennium Forum, Derry; White Star Of The North at Lyric Theatre Belfast; How The World Began for Out Of Joint (Arcola); God’s Country (Tinderbox); The Prophet Of Monto at The Flea Theatre (off-Broadway); The Great Ramshackle Heart (Old Vic New Voices/Public Theater, NY); Johnny Meister and The Stitch (Mead Theatre, Washington D.C); Dying City for Rough Magic SEEDS at Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Scenes From The Big Picture for Solas Nua, Washington D.C. (one of best 10 productions of decadeWashington Post).

Des was the original Associate Director on the West-End production of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (Palace), and has since directed new casts and productions of the play for Broadway, Melbourne, Hamburg, Toronto, Tokyo and San Francisco. During lockdown he directed the short film The Girl At The Window (by Lisa McGee) for the Splendid Isolation series produced by Lyric Theatre Belfast/BBC, and the film was subsequently selected for the Paris Short Film Festival and the Ontario Short Film Festival (where it was awarded second prize). Des is also a screenwriter and his original script Tribute is under development with Playground Entertainment.

Colin Carberry & Glenn PattersonOriginal Screenplay and Stage Adaptation

Colin is a writer of screenplays and fiction from Belfast. He has written various plays for BBC Radio 4 and is developing a TV series.

Glenn Patterson is a novelist, journalist and writer for film, television and radio from Northern Ireland who has recently written and presented the factual podcasts The Shankhill Gold Rush and before that The Northern Bank Job for BBC Radio 4. His books include Where Are We Now, Gull, and Backstop Land

As a duo, they wrote the film Good Vibrations which was nominated for Outstanding Debut at the 2014 BAFTA

Film Awards. They had previously won Best Script at the 2013 Irish Writers Guild Awards, and Best Script at the 2012 Dinard British Film Festival. They were also nominated for Best First Script of 2013 by the Writers Guild of Great Britain.

They are currently developing two new musicals.

Grace Smart

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Set Designer Theatre includes: The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, Metamorphoses, Henry VI, Richard III (The Globe); Red Riding Hood (Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse); The Wonderful World of Dissocia (TRSE); The Death of Dance (Theatre Royal Bath/ Arcola Theatre); Death of a Salesman (Parco Theatre, Japan); When the Long Trick’s Over (High Tide); A Chorus Line, My Beautiful Laundrette, Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual (Curve Theatre); Straight to Video (Civic Theatre); Herding Cats (Soho Theatre); Christmas Concert (Donmar Warehouse); Crocodile Fever (Traverse Theatre); The End of History (Royal Court); One Night in Miami, Shebeen (Nottingham Playhouse); God of Chaos (Theatre Royal, Plymouth); St Joan, Good Vibrations, Here Comes the Night, The Colleen Bawn (Lyric Theatre, Belfast); Killer Joe (Trafalgar Studios); Postcards from the Ledge (Landmark Productions/The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin); East is East (Northern Stage); Normal, Blasted (STYX); Shopping & Fucking (Lyric Hammersmith)

Opera includes: Last Days, Susanna (Royal Opera House); The World’s Wife (Mavron Quartet/Welsh National Opera).

Awards include: Linbury Prize for Design 2015 Overall Winner (St Joan).

Gillian Lennoxcostume Designer

After graduating with BA hons in Fashion and Textiles at The University of Ulster Gillian Lennox went on to be a designer within the fashion industry.

After a spell designing for Marks & Spencer Menswear Gillian began a 14-year career working for a London based manufacturing/design company where she progressed to Head Designer supplying companies such as on line retailer ASOS, and Southern

Ireland high street stores Dunnes and A-Wear. Her designs for ASOS and AWear were often featured in magazine editorials.

Gillian’s work often took her overseas to Paris, Syria and Morocco where she gained insight into the entire process of textile design, garment and pattern construction.

Throughout her career Gillian also continued with her own freelance work and has been a maker and illustrator for Universal Studios when they first came to Northern Ireland with films such as Your Highness and more recently was a maker for the movie The Northman

Gillian has assisted on the BBC Proms and Children in Need and designed and made the costumes for The Belfast Mela South Asian Dance Academy.

Before being appointed as Costume Supervisor with the Lyric Theatre in August 2017 Gillian free-lanced as a maker with the Lyric Theatre, working on various productions including Little Red Riding Hood & the Big Bad Wolf, The Gingerbread Mix Up, The 39 Steps and The Ladykillers

For the Lyric Theatre, Gillian has supervised the costume department on all producing shows for the past five years and has been the Costume Designer for Dr Scroggy’s War, Good Vibrations, Alice: The Musical, Double Cross, Rough Girls (Arts & Business Awards) Dark of the Moon, Shirley Valentine, Peter Pan: The musical, 1984 (Postponed Covid), Sadie, Dracula, Pinocchio, Blue stockings, The Snow Queen, Romeo & Juliet & Good Vibrations 2023

Most recently Gillian has been involved in a living history tender for Mid Ulster Council/Lyric designing and producing 23 costumes for historical sites and National trust properties.

KATIE RICHARDSONMUSICAL DIRECTOR, COMPOSER AND ARRANGER

Katie Richardson is a musician, composer, sound designer and musical director who currently makes her own music under the name Hex Hue. For several years she was a member of Choice nominated ‘Pleasure Beach’ with whom she toured the UK and Ireland. Under several different guises, she has worked and collaborated with musicians such as Foy Vance and Duke Special as well as supporting artists like Van Morrison, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Jesca Hoop, Bell X1, All Saints and many more.

Katie is one of award winning theatre company, Prime Cut’s, Reveal artists which champions and develops emerging theatre makers. She is currently working on a music based commission with them as part of this award. In Summer 2020 Katie curated the Creative Hub for the TedX Stormont online and co-founded Safe in Sound which is a new initiative with the vision to create a safe, strong, connected creative sector founded on equality, diversity and respect. This year she is working on several exciting large scale music commissions, theatre and film projects and her debut album as Hex hue is due for release in the Autumn.

Theatre Credits include: Rough Girls, Good Vibrations, All Mod Cons and Beauty and the Beast (Lyric Theatre), The New Electric Ballroom (The Gate Theatre), Father the Father (Prime Cut Productions), Not on Our Watch, Callings, The Shedding of Skin (Kabosh Theatre Company), Brink (Maiden Voyage Dance), The Man Who Fell to Pieces, Huzzies (Tinderbox Theatre Company).

Film credits include; Oyster (Farset Films), Let us be seen (Vish Films), The Death of a Projectionist (Out of Orbit), BIND - a dance film, Eileen McClory and Quotidian

JENNIFER ROONEYCHOREOGRAPHER & MOVEMENT DIRECTOR

Jennifer Rooney trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. She has worked as a choreographer for over twenty years and is currently the resident movement director on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (London).

Choreography credits

For TV and Film: Derry Girls (series 2 and 3), World on Fire (series 2), Old Friends and Other Days (Northern Ireland Opera)

Theatre: Into the Woods (West Australian Opera, Perth), Piaf (Gate Dublin), Into the Woods, La Boheme & Kiss Me Kate (Northern Ireland Opera), A Christmas Carol (The MAC), The Elves and the Shoemaker (Cahoots NI, The MAC), Good Vibrations (Lyric Theatre, Belfast), Turnabout (Maiden Voyage Dance)

Directing credits: The Devil Made Me Do It (NI Opera), Flight (BBC, One Dance Uk), Lark (Northern Ireland Screen)

Associate movement Director: Truth (Helen Chadwick Company, UK Tour), Once (The Olympia Theatre, Dublin & Charlotte Theatre, Seoul, South Korea) Resident Movement Director: Once (Phoenix Theatre, London)

Jack Knowleslighting Designer

Theatre includes Caroline, or Change (West End/Broadway); Private Lives, Committee (Donmar Warehouse); Romeo and Julie (also Sherman Theatre), Top Girls, Barber Shop Chronicles (also World Tour), Beginning (also West End), Cleansed (National Theatre); Best of Enemies, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Windsors: Endgame, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (West End); Patriots, Spring Awakening (nominated for WhatsOnStage Award for Best Lighting Design), Nine Lessons and Carols, The Duchess of Malfi, Three Sisters, Shipwreck, Machinal, They Drink it in the Congo, Boy, Carmen Disruption, Game (Almeida Theatre); Sons of the Prophet (Hampstead Theatre); Antigone (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp, The End of History, Instructions for Correct Assembly, 2071 (Royal Court); Venice Preserved (Royal Shakespeare Company); Anna Karenina, Steel (Sheffield Theatres); Light Falls, The Producers, The Greatest Play in the History of the World (also Traverse/Trafalgar Studios/UK Tour), Death of a Salesman, Happy Days, Parliament Square, Our Town, Twelfth

Night, A Streetcar Named Desire, Wit, The Skriker, There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Royal Exchange); Piaf, Wonderland (Nottingham Playhouse); Gin Craze! (Royal and Derngate); Good Vibrations (Lyric Theatre, Belfast/New York); Circle Mirror Transformation (Home MCR); Junkyard, Pygmalion (Headlong); Mary Stuart, The Beacon (Staatstheater Stuttgart); 4.48 Psychosis, Reisende auf einem Bein, Happy Days (Schauspielhaus Hamburg); The Forbidden Zone (Salzburg Festival/ Schaubühne/Barbican); Phaedra (Enniskillen International Beckett Festival); A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Vienna Burgtheater); Lungs, Yellow Wallpaper (Schaubühne); Night Train (Schauspiel Köln/Avignon Festival/ Theatertreffen). Opera includes The Seven Deadly Sins/Bluebeard’s Castle (Teatro Colón); La bohéme (Gothenburg Opera). Awards include Knight of Illumination Award for Barber Shop Chronicles.

Ian Vennardsound Designer

Ian Vennard has worked at the Lyric Theatre since May 2016 and is currently the Senior Production Technician.

His Lyric Theatre credits include: Alice the Musical (2018); Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleetstreet: The Musical (A Lyric Theatre and Northern Ireland Opera co-production - 2019); and Kiss Me, Kate (A Lyric Theatre and Northern Ireland Opera co-production2020), Rough Girls (2021), Propaganda: A New Musical (A Lyric Theatre and Belfast Ensemble co-production)

Ian also has close ties with the Belfast Ensemble since their conception and credits include: Doppler Effect (2017); Fall of the House of Usher (2018); Young Pornographers (2019); Abomination - a DUP Opera (2019 & 2022 Irish Tour) Into The Woods - Northern Ireland Opera: 2022 - Production Sound Designer