Meet the Awards Judges for Dublin Fringe Festival 2023
We're delighted to welcome our 2023 Dublin Fringe Festival awards judges to this year's proceedings!
Each year Dublin Fringe Festival invites 15 judges from the arts, media, community and other parts of Dublin life to join our festival community and select the nominees and recipients of the Dublin Fringe Festival Awards.
The Dublin Fringe Festival Awards are an opportunity to recognise, reward and celebrate the immense talent on display at our festival each year. This year over 560 artists are involved in making work at Dublin Fringe. We want to celebrate the hard work, guts and gumption it takes to put together a new piece of work.
Please join us in welcoming the amazing judges lending Dublin Fringe their brains, energy and heart for 2023:
Judges Chair
Rebecca Mairs is a script development professional and dramaturg with ten years’ experience working across the film, television, and theatre industries. She's currently Development Executive for Kennedy Films working across their slate of TV drama, feature, documentary and factual projects. Prior to this she was Literary Manager at the Lyric Theatre Belfast for seven years.
Ailish McCarthy is a stand-up comedian and since her arrival on the comedy scene in 2019, Ailish has performed at the Vodafone Comedy Festival, MC'd at the Hazelwood tent in Electric Picnic, and performed in YukYuks in Vancouver. During the pandemic she co-hosted a weekly show on Thursdays called The party t**s, appeared as a guest on Virgin Media’s hooked on podcast, Komedians International (Comedy Central) and was the host of the Comedy Crowd Euros Campaign. She was the first comic and first female comic to reach 1,000 laughs on Jason Byrnes iLaugh app. She is also one of the members of the Comedy safety standards, promoting safety in comedy. Ailish is a co-founder of The Irish Comedy Guide.
Clodagh Mooney Duggan is an actor and theatre maker based in Dublin, working in both Theatre and Film. She will next be appearing as Mary in the upcoming Netflix series Bodkin. Other recent credits include Red Election (Ovation), Sauce by Ciara Elizabeth Smyth, Elenora Salter and The Monster From The Sea (Duets 2021) directed By Katie O’Halloran, A Day in May directed by Gerard Stembridge, The Roaring Banshees, Susie and The Story Shredder and Tryst. Her work as a writer and poet has seen her published in Poethead, Green Carnations and the second volume of Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus. She is currently working on Made from Paper, a show for young audiences, which was funded by The Arts Council and Dublin Theatre Festival Futures Programme.
Diana Bamimeke is an art writer and independent curator based in Dublin, interested in curating and producing socially engaged work. They are Superprojects' 2023/24 Curatorial Fellow, and their writing has been published by Origins Eile, Visual Artists Ireland News Sheet, Technological University Dublin and frieze.
Eleanor White is Development Executive at Deadpan Pictures, an award-winning boutique production company specialising in drama with a comic tone. Eleanor was previously Literary Manager at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, where she drove all aspects of the commissioning process and the development of new writers of all levels. Dramaturgy for the Traverse includes: Wilf, This is Paradise, Still, The Monstrous Heart, and Crocodile Fever, in addition to many developmental readings and work-in-progress sharings. Other credits as Dramaturg include: The Hare (Once Off Productions and Cairde Arts Festival), The Saviour (Landmark Productions), The Country Girls (Abbey Theatre), Richard III (as Associate Dramaturg, Druid Theatre Company). Eleanor has been a script reader for a number of leading UK and Irish companies and has worked in the literary departments of Irish Arts Center and Signature Theatre Company in New York City. She was the inaugural recipient of Druid’s prestigious Marie Mullen Bursary.
Erin McGathy is an award-winning comedian, actor, screenwriter and the Artistic Director of MOB Theatre Dublin, Ireland’s premiere Alternative Comedy Theatre + School. Since relocating to Dublin from California in 2016, Erin has created three solo shows as well as the acclaimed Improvised Play, Witches & Dogs for the Dublin & Edinburgh Fringes. She is a regular script consultant for RTÉ/Sky, and has directed numerous live comedy shows in Dublin, London and Amsterdam. Erin produces MOB Theatre Dublin’s weekly show at Wigwam, where she also teaches Improv and Screenwriting. She has performed with fan fav, Dreamgun Film Reads since 2017. US Television credits include Drunk History, Community, and Harmonquest. Film credits include Terrence Mallick’s Knight of Cups and the 2023 film, Apocalypse Clown directed by George Kane, and co-starring Natalie Palamides.
Gearóid O Dea is a visual artist based in Dublin. His practice revolves around mark-making and explorations of cognitive function and anxiety. He employs various artistic mediums, including painting, sculpture, and drawing, to create works ranging from two-dimensional, wall-mounted pieces to indoor and outdoor installations. At the core of his current series lies the combination of mark-making techniques with the physical presence of sculpture, a concept strongly influenced by his personal experience with heightened anxiety. Gearoid O'Dea delves into primary documentation and draws from theoretical frameworks to develop his series, centered on the notion that heightened awareness of life's intricacies can counterbalance the detachment and disconnection caused by anxiety disorders.
Jennifer Aust has stage managed on six Dublin Fringe shows in the last nine years, and many others elsewhere. She's also an artist liaison, theatre maker, and has been seen many times both in front of house, and in the box office. Jennifer has worked in various capacities with, for, and in: The Abbey Theatre, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Gilded Balloon, The Pleasance, Junk Ensemble, Pan Pan, Landmark Productions, OXBO, Felicity, anseo | anois, Lyric Theatre, Smock Alley Theatre, Draoícht, The New Theatre, Project Arts Centre, DLR Mill Theatre, Solstice Arts Centre, THISISPOPBABY, Live Collision, MCD, Dublin Youth Theatre, The Complex, Prague Fringe, and more. She's an arts obsessive with a grá for multidisciplinary, challenging live work with heart - and for contributing to cultural life in Dublin.
John King is a director and theatre-maker from Dublin, working in the US, the UK and Ireland. With theatre and sound collective Murmuration, he has made the headphone shows One Moment Now (Dublin and Washington, D.C.), You’re Still Here (Dublin Fringe commission, co-presented by the Abbey Theatre), Will I See You There (Dublin Fringe), and Summertime (Dublin Fringe, Drogheda Arts Festival, Abbey Young Curators' Festival). Other directing work includes The Cyclone Kid (Bewley’s) and The Overcoat (Omnibus Theatre). He was Resident Assistant Director on the 2018-19 season at Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C., and has assisted on touring productions of Conversations After Sex (thisispopbaby, 2023) and Maria Stuarda (Irish National Opera, 2022). John is a former Resident Artist at Dublin Fringe (2020) and at Bewley's Café (2022). He is currently an Associate Artist at Solas Nua in Washington, D.C.
Kate Gilmore is an Irish Times Theatre Award winner who has worked extensively as a theatre actor performing in shows like PIAF, The Snapper and The Great Gatsby at Gate Theatre and in Theatre for One and Straight to Video for Landmark Productions. She performed at the Abbey Theatre and with Rough Magic Theatre Company. Kate's one woman show The Wickedness of Oz - a show in a bag for Dublin Fringe in 2016 - went on to win a Zebbie award for its radio version on RTE Radio One and is now being developed into a feature film with Screen Ireland. Kate was part of the inaugural Actor as Creator scheme for which she made her award-winning debut short film Someday Sadie now also in development as a feature film with Screen Ireland. Recently, Kate co-founded a screen development and production company, Two Sparks, with fellow actor/writer Fionnuala Gygax.
Morgana MacIntyre is a Belfast born, Dublin based singer-songwriter and one half of award-winning duo, Saint Sister. Her voice has taken her around the world; performing at events ranging from Glastonbury to the Elysee Palace.
Murky Onyango is a Filmmaker who is focused on creating films about the trans experience. She got her foundations and understanding of film from BCFE where she graduated the Animation course in 2023 which has shaped how she approaches film with the idea that every frame should be its own unique painting. She is now focusing on mixing the two forms of cinema to create mixed media films which are able to depict experiences in whichever way is the most effective and honest way possible. Her work has been shown in many exhibitions including The Gaze Film Festival, The Complex, Pallas Projects, The Glucksman, and Butler Gallery.
Tobi Balogun is a Multidisciplinary Artist, working across Dance, Theatre, Voice and Design. In 2020 he received a Create Bursary to develop phase one of BLACK CANVAS - an R&D project in relation to Black-Irish creatives and communities. In 2021 he also received an Art’s Council - Bursary Award to develop work emerging from this, which included a curatorial residency in Dance Ireland (MoveMEANT 2022), LIBERTYVIBES - and event supported by DCC Local Live Performance, and NATIVES as part of Culture Night (2022). He is also part of a strategic thinking partnership between DDF, 5 lamps Festival, Carlow Arts Festival and Top 8. As a choreographer and performer, he has worked with Theatre Maker Louise White, Felispeaks, Brokentalkers, and with music artists Burna Boy and Ed Sheeran among others.
Vickey Curtis is an out-spoken word artist from Dublin. She is a theatre maker, party facilitator and all round mischief merchant. From curating dyke nights in dive bars to documentary theatre she has been around the arts block. She loves making a show of herself, credits include GAA MAAD (DUETS recipient), Finem Respice (Dublin Fringe), and Victor & Gord (Dublin Fringe). She has hosted spoken word nights going on a decade now, Come Rhyme With Me, Sceals of the City, and Queering Borders to name a few. She thinks art is magic!
Zeda the Architect aka Oyindamola Animashaun is a visual artist, fashion editor, stylist, director and producer currently based in Dublin, Ireland. She has experience working on projects, shoots, fashion shows and music videos for artists, charities, brands, college societies, to name a few. Over her budding career, she has been lucky to direct, style and produce big-scale projects viewed and/or attended by diverse audiences. She is also featured as a NXT GEN Artist under Not Another Intl, and is currently the fashion editor of VIP Publishing, working across Stellar, VIP and TV NOW Magazine on all fashion content such as covers, features, shoots and editorials. Zeda’s only desire as an artist is to make things which would make her Black and Irish 13 year old self happy.