The Team
Alyson Campbell - Director
Alyson has collaborated closely with Sydney playwright Lachlan Philpott since their production of his first play Bison in 2000. Alyson most recently directed the premiere of Philpott’s play The Trouble with Harry at the MAC, Belfast, as part of Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2013 and directed its Australian premiere for the Melbourne International Arts Festival 2014. This production won prestigious Green Room awards for directing and best production. Alyson is currently Coordinator of Graduate Studies in Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her research focuses on directing and dramaturgy, particularly questions of queer dramaturgies and HIV and AIDS in performance
Lachlan Philpott - Writer
Lachlan’s plays have been produced in Australia, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the USA. He has worked in a long collaboration with director Alyson Campbell creating new queer work. Lachlan has also been a writer in residence at Kansas State University, The American Conservatory Theatre San Francisco, Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney, The Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, The Playwrights Foundation San Francisco and Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne. Lachlan was Chair of the Australian Writer’s Guild Playwrights’ Committee between 2012 and 2016.
Niall Rea - Designer
Niall has been a government funded researcher in the Brian Friel Centre for Theatre Research at Queen’s University in Belfast. His research explores the performance of queer identities in Northern Ireland through conflict and post-conflict periods. He has a forthcoming essay to be published in 2016 in Performing Ireland on his contemporary queer scenographic practice and is a lecturer in performance design at Sligo Institute of Technology. He is artistic director of TheatreofplucK, Northern Ireland’s first publicly funded gay theatre company. As a designer, Niall has worked extensively all over the UK and Ireland, as well as in the rest of Europe and the USA.
Matthew Cavan - Performer (GL RY)
Matthew Cavan is a theatre and drag performance artist. He’s worked with TheatreofplucK on productions both in Belfast and London. As an artist, he focuses on the intersection of activism and performance concerning HIV. He is currently a resident performer at the Cabaret Supperclub and Maverick Bar in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Ross Anderson - Performer (GL RY)
Sometimes known as The Voice Bear, Ross Anderson-Doherty is a queer performer and theatre-maker living and working in Belfast. He has also worked extensively through the UK and Ireland as a voice teacher. A lover of popular modes of performance, he has developed his own style of cabaret over the years and now finds himself the creative director of Belfast's Cabaret Supper Club. For the last four years he has brought a little bit of the queer to the mainstream by playing a very bearded dame who is prone to extempore feminist outbursts in the pantomime at the Waterfront Hall, Belfast.
Dave Bird - Sound Designer
David is an active composer and sound designer, working with Film, Contemporary Dance, Circus and Theatre. In 2014, David completed a Ph.D. candidacy at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Queen's University, Belfast.
Kim Davis - Dramaturg & Consultant (WHoLE)
Kim Davis is an artist—an openly HIV positive woman of 20 years, an activist—a global cross-cultural practitioner. Kim founded GloballyAware, a non profit organization, and is the director and producer of‘Positively Fabulous+’. Changing Women’s Lives a large-scale interdisciplinary health-arts campaign, connecting Women Living with HIV and global communities through co-creative filmmaking, innovative public arts interventions and social media strategies.
Andrew Goyvaerts - Contextual Dramaturgy & Consultant
Andrew co-founded Positive Moving On, a not-for-profit grassroots project benefitting the HIV community. The organisation was started by two people living with the condition and aims to promote education and awareness of HIV, provide support (especially in rural areas) and lobby for effective solutions to the problems PLHIV face.
Guest Performers
Miche Doherty, Jo Donnelly, Marie Jones, Neil Keery, Jonny McMillen, Eleanor Methven, Carol Moore and Brenda Winter-Palmer, Nicky Harley, Mary Jordan and Kate Guelke.
Mercedes Sharma - Assistant Director
Mercedes grew up in Manchester where she worked as a teaching assistant in a sixth form drama department before moving to Belfast. She is currently a third year drama student at Queen’s and hopes to continue to pursue the creation of new performances like GL RY in the future.
Alexander Charles Adams - Dramaturgy / Sound Design Intern
Alexander is a dramaturg and sound artist whose research interests are contemporary HIV/AIDS performance and dramaturgy of BDSM. Alexander is currently a pursuing a BA in Theatre Studies at Louisiana State University’s School of Theatre and producer of the sound art podcast Smash/Cut.
Martin McDowell - Production Manager / Dramaturgy
Martin is an arts creative who joined Theatreofpluck in 2015 as Production Manager of Tr>uble. He has previously performed at Bristol Old Vic and Bristol Ferment as well as Edinburgh Festivals.
Siobhán Barbour - Project Co-Ordinator / Dramaturgy
Siobhán is a stage and production manager based in Belfast whose credits include work for the Old Vic, Royal Court, Lyric Theatre (Belfast), Outburst Queer Arts Festival, Belfast International Arts Festival, Happy Days International Beckett Festival, Belfast Children's Festival, Tinderbox, Prime Cut, Rawlife, Big Telly, Green Shoot, and Walk the Plank.
Sligo IT Theatre Design Students - Assistant Designers
GL_RY
Daniel Carolan
Tara Gannon Carr
Joanne Greally
Shane Larkin
Katie Lynch
Mark Reynolds
WHoLE
Pamela Bird
Ruth Rippon
Trish McTighe - Dramaturgy
James Watson - Cake Consultant/Baker
Partner Organisations
Acknowledgements
Thanks first and foremost to the people living with HIV who have given us their time and trusted us with their stories.
The project concept is indebted to Will McBride and Penny Harpham and their piece Bedding (2014), which was curated by Alyson Campbell for the AIDS 2014 Cultural Programme.
Many thanks to Ruth McCarthy - Hilary McCollum - Eoin Dara - Dawn Love - Queen's University Drama - Dr Michelle McIntyre - Gavin Armstrong - Jacquie Richardson - Kurt Taroff - Róisín McNamee - The Theatre Design students from Sligo Institute of Technology