Sarah Jane Scaife
Director
Sarah Jane Scaife is the Artistic Director of Company SJ, which was formed in 2009, but has its roots back as far as the 1990s. In the early 1990s Sarah Jane Scaife founded the theatre company Throwin' Shapes, which specialised in the works of W. B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett. The present company looks to fuse performance and research as an active artistic engagement between the two, presenting the work of Samuel Beckett and W. B. Yeats from and for a 21st century Ireland, and through that initial exploration for a wider international audience. Company SJ collaborate closely with renowned Irish actor Raymond Keane (Barabbas Theatre Company), they are currently working on Company SJ's new piece based on Beckett's prose piece Fizzles, which will premiere in Ireland in September 2014. Company SJ is very fortunate to work with another of Ireland's leading physical actors, Bryan Burroughs, since 2009 and with musician and actor Trevor Knight since 2013.
Bryan Burroughs
Actor
Bryan trained at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Actor: The Christmas Story (Radio Telefis Eireann Cor Na nOg), A Christmas Carol (Livin Dred), Connected (Green Room ), Faust (Crazy Dog Audio Theatre), Act Without Words II (Company SJ ) (2010 Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, London 2011). Johnny Patterson The Singing Irish Clown*(Barabbas). The Blanch, (Carpet), Submarine Man (Upstate), All In The Timing (Inis), Can You Catch A Mermaid (The Pavilion), The Children of Lir (The Abbey), Myrmidons (Ouroboros), My Foot My Tutor**(Articulate Anatomy), Hedda Gabler, Duchess of Malfi (Loose Canon).
Director: Fight Night (Rise) — Best Actor & Bewleys Little Gem Award at Absolut Fringe 2010, Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2011, Nationwide Irish tour.
Movement Director: Macbeth (Second Age), Fool For Love (Peacock Theatre), Company Of Wolves, Sweeney Astray (Trinity College Dublin), Faust (Crazy Dog Audio Theatre), The Armed Man (Aspiro), Myrmidons (Ouroboros), Metamorphosis (Once Off) and Submarine Man (Upstate).
Bryan has taught Movement at Trinity College Dublin, NYU/Tisch Dublin School of the Arts, the Accademia dell' Arte in Arezzo, Italy and teaches Physical Theatre at The Lir (The Irish Academy of Dramatic Arts in assoc with RADA).
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Awards : Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor 2009
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Best Male Performance at the Dublin Theatre Fringe Festival 2004
Raymond Keane
Actor
Raymond is co-founder and Artistic Director of Barabbas Theatre Company. Now in its eighteenth year, Barabbas continues to produce its unique form of theatre on the Irish and international stage. The company's acclaimed production of Lennox Robinson's The Whiteheaded Boy completed a six-city tour of the USA culminating at BAM's Next Wave Festival in 1999. Circus written and directed by Raymond played the 2009 Festival of Arts and Ideas New Haven.
More recently he directed The Cambria by Donal O'Kelly for Benbo Productions, which played the Irish Arts Centre New York earlier this year before touring to The Harare Festival of Arts in Zambia and Luaska in Zimbabwe. For Benbo he also directed The Hand by Donal O'Kelly, playing the Villar Centre, Beaver Creek, Colorado in 2003 Raymond has just made his opera directorial debut on Pagliacci at The Everyman Palace in Cork Ireland.
He has taught and continues to teach his theatre practice in Ireland and internationally in institutions such as The Lir Academy for Dramatic Arts Dublin, The Samuel Beckett Department of Drama Trinity College Dublin, University Colleges Dublin, Galway, Cork and Maynooth, The Gaiety School of Acting Dublin, Dartmouth College Hanover U.S.A. Yale University, New Haven Connecticut USA, Aberystwyth University Wales, Circus School Aarhus Denmark and Queens University Belfast.
He is currently working with Sarah Jane Scaife on Samuel Beckett's prose pice Fizzles for the Dublin Tiger Fringe Festival 2014.
Trevor Knight
Actor
Trevor Knight is a very well known Irish contemporary music composer and musician. He was born in England and moved to Ireland in the late 1950s. He began his early musical education studying piano. During the 1970s while a student he formed the experimental jazz fusion band Naima, the first outlet for his own compositions. In the late 1970s he lived in the Netherlands and formed Auto da Fé, an avant-garde pop group with a strong theatrical performance element. The group recorded three albums and toured extensively during the 1980s.
In addition to his work in experimental jazz and pop, Trevor Knight has composed music for theatre productions, much of it existing as compositions in their own right. Commissions and performances include an electro-acoustic work commissioned by the Tinahely Arts Centre, Co. Wicklow.
Trevor has his own company called the Devil's Spine Band, which collaborates with Artist Alice Maher, and performers Gyohei Zaitsu and Olwen Fouere. Trevor Knight was elected to Aosdána, Ireland's state-sponsored academy of creative artists, in 2007.
Trevor is delighted to make his stage debut as an actor with Company SJ.
Aedín Cosgrove
Designer
Aedín co-founded Pan Pan Theatre Company in Ireland in 1991. Designs for Pan Pan include Standoffish, Cartoon, Mac-Beth 7, Oedipus Loves You, The Idiots, The Playboy of the Western World (Beijing), The Crumb Trail, The Rehearsal Playing the Dane (winner of the Irish Times Theatre Awards: Best Set Design and Best Production 2010) which was also presented at The Skirball Theatre in NYU, New York and Do Di Zhu (Fight the Landlord) for Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre and Shanghai Expo, All That Fall by Samuel Beckett (winner of the Irish Times Theatre Awards: Best Lighting Design 2011) and A Doll House, 2012.
Aedín joined director Dylan Tighe to design lighting for No Worst There Is None in Newman House in 2010. In 2011 she also designed set and lighting for Opera Theatre Company's Pasquale, Four Told at Project Cube in Dublin, Man of Valour for Corn Exchange and lighting design for Perve by Stacey Gregg at Ireland's Abbey Theatre (Peacock stage) and The Devils' Spine Band for Galway Arts Festival, a collaboration between Composer Trevor Knight, Artist Alice Maher, and performers Gyohei Zaitsu and Olwen Fouere.
Lianne O'Shea
Goad — Stage Manager
Lianne has been working as a theatre maker since 2006. Recently she has worked as a designer on productions of The Playboy of the Western World, The Seagull and Easter 1917 (Moat Theatre, Naas). As a Lighting Designer she has worked on a variety of productions from musicals such as Thoroughly Modern Millie (Clane Abbey), to theatre including The Drunkard (Samuel Beckett Centre), A Life (Moat Theatre, Naas) and Never Look in the Mirror When you're Dancing (Dublin Fringe Festival). Lianne has stage-managed with theatre companies such as Barabbas The Company and Complex Productions in addition to previous stagings of Act Without Words II with Company SJ. Lianne has also worked as a director; her most recent credits include Romeo & Juliet and the Merchant of Venice. She has a Masters in Directing from University College Dublin.