AIDAN KELLY – Joe

The Pride of Parnell Street is Aidan’s first show with Fishamble. Other theatre productions include Jimmy Farrell in The Playboy Of The Western World, James Tyrone Jnr in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Tim in The Good Father, and Ned in Philadelphia, Here I Come, all directed by Garry Hynes for Druid Theatre, and Ernesto Roma in The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui, C in Terminus, Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, Father Flynn in Doubt, The Howie Lee in Howie The Rookie, Austin in True West, Jack Clitheroe in The Plough And The Stars, Johnny Boyle in Juno And The Paycock, Don Mauro in The Barbaric Comedies, The Guard in The Burial At Thebes, Lep in Sucking Dublin, all for The Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

Other theatre includes Shory in The Man Who Had All The Luck (Donmar Warehouse, London), Andy in Take Me Away (Rough Magic), Marco in A View From The Bridge (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Howie The Rookie (Bush Theatre, London).

Film and TV includes Ashes to Ashes, Murphy’s Law, Kitchen and Rough Justice (BBC), Billy in Eden, and various films and series for RTE television.

MARY MURRAY – Janet

Mary recently toured Romania and Bulgaria with the revival of Noah and The Tower Flower for Fishamble Theatre Company (Irish Times Theatre Award for Best New Play). She also won Best Female Actor at the MAMCA awards for The Pride Of Parnell Street. Other productions include Macbecks for Long Road Productions, Howya for Visions Productions, The Alice Trilogy with The Abbey Theatre, for which she received the Irish Times “Best Supporting Actress” Award. Splendour with RAW Productions, Sleeping Beauty for Landmark Productions, Macbeth with Second Age, Operation Easter and Five Kinds Of Silence with Calypso Productions, Family Stories for B*spoke Theatre Company (Irish Times Award Nominee 2005), Sister with Visions Productions, Oh When The Hoops with Liberty Productions, Playing Politics as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Knocknashee with Tall Tales, The Grapes Of Wrath with Storytellers Theatre Company, Give Us A Break and Shadow Of A Gunman both for Tobarnarun and On Raftery’s Hill – a co production with Druid and The Royal Court ( which performed at the Eisenhower, Washington, the Royal Court in London, Galway Town Hall and the Gate Dublin) .

Her film and television credits include: Situations Vacant, The Con Saw Tina Effect, Eamon, El Juego Del Ahorcado, Little White Lie, Blue Soup, Prosperity, Frankie, Bitterness, What If?, King Of Nothing, Adam And Paul, W.C., The Magdalene Sisters, On The Edge, Accelerator, Crushproof, A Great Party, Recoil, The Marriage Of Strongbow and Aoife, The Very Stuff, ER, Fair City, Love Is The Drug, The Big Bow Wow, Ambassador and Random Passage.

Mary has also worked with RTE radio on plays including Lennon’s Guitar, The Sorting Office Of The Universe, Bog Boy, Appearances, Moving Day and Happy Hour. She narrated Can Lilly O’ Shea Come Out To Play for The Book On One. Other radio drama includes Dublin Tenement Life for Dublin History Museum and The Lost Patriot for Tin Pot Productions.

Mary is a multi award winning singer and the director of Visions Drama School.

SEBASTIAN BARRY – Playwright

Sebastian Barry is a major, internationally-renowned playwright and novelist. He was born in Dublin in 1955 and educated at Trinity College Dublin. He was Writer Fellow there in 1996. He was also Writer in Association at the Abbey Theatre in 1990, and recently held the Heimbold Visiting Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University in the USA. His ten plays include Boss Grady’s Boys (Abbey 1988), The Steward of Christendom (1995, which played London and New York and toured internationally with Out-of-Joint theatre company), and Our Lady of Sligo (1998, London, Dublin and New York, Out-of-Joint). His theatre awards include the BBC/Stewart Parker Award (1989), the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the Ireland/America Literary Prize, the Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play, the Writers’ Guild Award, the Lloyds Private Banking Playwright of the Year Award and the Peggy Ramsay Play Award (jointly), as well as a nomination for the Olivier Award. Sebastian has also published several works of poetry and fiction, including the novels The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (Picador 1998), Annie Dunne (Faber and Faber 2002) and A Long Long Way (Faber and Faber 2005) which was short listed for the Booker Prize 2005 and the International Dublin Impac Prize, and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. His new novel The Secret Scripture was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the Costa Book of the Year, the Hughes and Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the Tubridy Listeners’ Choice Award, and was shortlisted for seven other awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and is translated into twenty-seven languages. The Pride of Parnell Street was nominated for an Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for Best Play. Dallas Sweetman, a commission from Paines Plough and Canterbury Cathedral, played in the cathedral nave last year. He has two plays pending, Tales of Ballycumber for the Abbey theatre in Dublin, and Andersen’s English for Out-of-Joint theatre company in London.

JIM CULLETON – Director

Jim is the Artistic Director of Fishamble: The New Play Company, for which he most recently directed Forgotten by Pat Kinevane (Irish tour, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Sibiu, Prague, Paris, Reykjavik), Handel’s Crossing by Joseph O’Connor (Dublin Handel Festival), Rank by Robert Massey (Dublin Theatre Festival and Tricycle, London), The Pride of Parnell Street by Sebastian Barry (Irish tour, London, France, Germany, US), Noah and the Tower Flower by Sean McLoughlin (Ballymun, Bulgaria and Romania, Irish Times Award and Stewart Parker Trust Award winner), Monged by Gary Duggan (Irish and UK tour, Stewart Parker Trust Award winner), and site-specific plays for Whereabouts (Irish Times Award winner).

He has also directed for Amnesty International, Pigsback, 7:84 (Scotland), Project Arts Centre, Amharclann de hIde, Tinderbox, the Passion Machine, the Ark, Second Age, RTE Radio 1, the Irish Council for Bioethics, the Abbey/Peacock, Semper Fi, TNL Canada, Scotland’s Ensemble at Dundee Rep, Draiocht, Barnstorm, TCD School of Drama, RTE lyric fm, Roundabout, and the Belgrade.

His productions have won or been nominated for awards, including Irish Times Theatre Awards, Entertainment & Media Awards, In Dublin Theatre Awards, MAMCA Awards, TMA Awards and Allianz/Business to Arts Awards. He has edited and contributed to books for New Island, Carysfort Press, Ubu, Amnesty International, European Theatre Convention and NCI.

He has directed readings of new Irish plays for Origin (New York) and The Pride of Parnell Street at the Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven. Jim has been asked to develop work for the VSA arts festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2010 and Forgotten has been invited to the Irish Arts Center in New York, also in 2010.