The acting school features an international team of specialised tutors with extensive training and cross-over experience in teaching, acting, directing, writing and producing. It is a key priority of the school to balance high artistic standard with a supportive environment to encourage students to explore, experience and progress. Please have a look at our principles of operation.
Kathleen Warner Yeates
Director of Flying Turtle Productions
Kathleen was trained with a BFA in Related Arts and Theatre and the Masters program at Villanova University for Acting and Directing, and has worked in the U.S. as a professional actor and director in theatre & film for over 35 years. She has directed, acted, and written for Off-Broadway and throughout U.S. and Dublin, and has had the lead role acting in several independent films, voice-overs and commercials. She continues to work in all fields of the entertainment industries. Read more about Kathleen’s experience.
Kathleen has been an acting tutor for over 30 years, teaching acting at Penn State University, Villanova University, and other professional training programs. She is the Director of Flying Turtle Productions and works as a consultant for Directing Actors for Film and Customised Corporate Training as well as offering her expertise as a facilitator for some classes.
Current Facilitators / Guest Artists
Ann Russell
Adult Scene Study, Public Speaking
Ann Russell trained with the late Deirdre O’Connell at the Focus Stanislavski Studio, has an MA in Modern Drama from UCD and a Licentiate Diploma (Teaching) from the London College of Music and Drama.
Ann is a member of ReActors Actors’ Agency. Some of her favourite recent roles include The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet for Devise + Conquer: Constance in Elysium Nevada by Barry McKinley, Bewleys Café Theatre and UK/Irish tour (Elysium Nevada was nominated for an Irish Times best new play award in 2010) and Duchess of Gloucester in Shakespeare’s Richard 11 at Smock Alley. She also played in Portia Coughlan by Marina Carr for Bluepatch; Reading Turgenev by Johnny Hanrahan for Meridian; John B. Keane’s The Chastitute and Moll; Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa and Vampirella and the Company of Wolves based on the work of Angela Carter and toured UK and Ireland with Women on the Verge of HRT. In A Titter of Wit which she directed and performed in at the Irish Writers’ Centre, she played various characters from the work of great dramatists such as Sheridan, Wilde and O’Casey. At Focus Theatre she appeared in many productions including The Secret Rapture, All My Sons, The Balcony, Precious Sons and Awake and Sing
Directing includes the highly successful The Bother with the Brother based on the work of Flann O’Brien and performed at Bewley’s Café Theatre for the 100th anniversary of the birth of this great writer and The Shape and The Stump at Focus Theatre. Other directing includes The Magic Glasses by George Fitzmaurice at St. John’s Theatre for Listowel Writers’ Week, The Cut by Tara Maria Lovett, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Greatest Hits (Dublin Fringe) and Are You Listening to me Gaybo? by Mary Halpin which toured throughout Ireland
TV and Film: Small Victories for Crucible films, Dublin Stories and Fair City for RTE; Family and Ballykissangel for BBC. Frankie Starlight, Snakes and Ladders, The Widow’s Son, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Daily Strife and Slán agus Beannacht.
Barry McEvoy
Screenwriting
Barry McEvoy has over 25 years professional experience in Theatre, Television and Film, collaborating with world renowned artists in the U.S., Ireland and U.K. He wrote and acted in the Barry Levinson, Dreamworks production An Everlasting Piece. As an actor or writer he has collaborated with renowned industry professionals including; Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad), Joel Schumacher (Veronica Guerin) Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon), Karel Reisz (The French Lieutenant’s Woman) and Oliver Hirschbiegel (Five Minutes of Heaven). He has written feature screenplays for Artisan/Summit and Dreamworks and, completed rewrites for Workhorse Films, Parallel Pictures and Touchstone.
Variety Magazine awarded him Screenwriter to Watch (2000) and he carries an MFA in Playwriting from The LIR academy, Trinity College. His extensive theatre CV includes work by Harold Pinter, W.B. Yeats, John Osborne, Brian Friel, Wendy Wasserstein, Samuel Beckett, Conor McPherson and Vaclav Havel and, he is a founding member of Scena Theatre, Washington DC.
His next film SHAM is being produced by Deadpan/Grand (Moone Boy) and Baby Cow (Philomena), to be directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty).
Aislinn Ní Uallacháin
Improvisation / Adult Drama for Fun
Aislinn Ní Uallacháin is a professional actor and improviser based in Dublin with an Honours Degree in Drama Studies from Trinity College. She has also attended various improvisation workshops at Second City, Chicago. As a founding member of Laughter Lines Dublin, a comedy improvisation troupe, she performed in their highly successful Wednesday residency in The Duke Pub in Dublin for three years. Aislinn is now one half of the comedy improv duo Comedy Shenanigans, performing at this year’s Camden Fringe in the London Irish Centre. She has performed improv at the Body and Soul Festival 2015/16, Improvfest 2013-2015, The Comedy Crunch, The Ha’penny Laughs, The Edinburgh Fringe and various corporate events for companies such as Bank of Ireland and the ISACA Conference 2015 in Croke Park.In August 2015, she was awarded ‘Best Female Improviser’ at Improvaganza, an improvisation festival run by the Harbour Playhouse in Dublin.
She has written, directed and acted in various improvised performances for the National Leprechaun Museum and Malahide Castle and TV credits include Raw and An Klondike for TG4.
Steve Gunn
Acting for Television
Steve Gunn has been acting on stage and screen for more than twenty years. He’s probably best known as Dan Keating in Fair City. He’ll be appearing soon in ‘The Professor And The Madman’ with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn and has also appeared as ‘Various Characters’ in The Mario Rosenstock Show. ‘Newgate Driver’, Ripper St, BBC. ‘Jailor’, Moonfleet, Sky TV. ‘Bill Armstrong’, Titanic Blood and Steel, Starz. ‘Brian’ in the Irish Film Board short ‘Barry’s Bespoke Bakery’.
Steve trained at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. He has a certificate in Theatre directing from NUI Maynooth, has taught monologue classes at the Irish Film Academy and held workshops and acting for camera classes with Crooked House Theatre Company.
Anna Nugent
Teen Acting
Anna trained at the Gaiety School of Acting and ArtsTrain (Youth Theatre Ireland) and holds a primary degree in Theatre and Criminal Justice from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Anna has over 20 years experience as an actor, director and facilitator in Ireland, the US and UK. Her acting includes work on stage with companies such as TEAM, Island, Art House (Jersey City), Boomerang Rep, Irish Repertory Theatre, Tangent, the cell (winner Best Actress Award for the 1st Irish Theatre Festival in NY), and on film/TV/voiceover projects such as Law & Order: SVU, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Long Wet Grass and The Ugly Duckling and Me.
Facilitating/directing experience includes creating the Story Haven creativity workshops for kids, developing the verbatim play Living Grace, directing plays and musicals for secondary schools, and leading workshops for young people and adults in a variety of settings (such as ‘Intro to Drama’ at the Dochas Centre on behalf of the Abbey Theatre).
As co-founder of AboutFACE Ireland, Anna has appeared in 7 full productions, directed numerous readings and workshops, and produced many shows including the NEWvember New Plays Festival in upstate New York for 5 years and in Dublin since 2017.
AnnMarie O Donovan
Teen Acting
AnnMarie O Donovan is an Actor, Playwright and Theatre Instructor. She began her training in University College Dublin and went on to further study with the Gaiety and Abbey Schools of Acting & Drama. She has performed in a wide variety of professional contexts including Irish theatre, film and television. She holds an Associate Diploma in Drama from the Royal Irish Academy and has devised, directed and staged over 20 stage plays for young performers. She combines her theatre work with dynamic communication and performance skills coaching. AnnMarie has successfully coached individuals and groups from entrepreneurs to senior board directors, inspiring and empowering them to increase their personal impact, authenticity and presence.
Paula Wolfenden
Youth Drama
Miriam Stewart
Learn English through Drama
Miriam is a CELT certified English language teacher who has spent the past 12 years working in Ireland, Kenya, India and Thailand as an English language teacher and drama facilitator. With her background in Montessori education, Miriam has always had a strong interest in the arts and is a passionate advocate for creativity in education. She has also worked as a teaching coordinator for the volunteer organisation Suas in several capacities: conducting teacher training in English language teaching and drama, coordinating the teaching teams in Africa and Asia and liaising with local educators to develop their language and arts curriculum.
Miriam has always incorporated drama into her classroom and believes that it is the perfect medium for language learning. She is currently completing a Masters in Drama in Education through Trinity College, a study which involves researching the impact of drama on the acquisition of English grammar. This study has led Miriam to design an original curriculum to teach English language through drama and is the perfect combination of her two great passions-language learning and drama.
Lisa Walsh (cover)
Advanced Adult Scene Study,Youth Drama, Adult Drama for Fun
Lisa is a Speech, Acting and Communications Facilitator. As an Actress, Voice-Over Artist and Theatre Maker, Lisa works professionally as a performer in each field she teaches.
Some facilitation credits include The Abbey Theatre, Stagecoach Dublin, Betty Ann Norton Theatre School, Emma Coogan School of Speech & Drama, Dublin Academy of Dramatic Arts, Imaginosity Children’s Museum and Google. Some performance credits for TV and Film include Fair City, Game Of Thrones, Cluck (Dir. Michael Lavelle), Shadow Dancer (Dir. James Marsh) and Pat Short’s Mattie. For Theatre, national tour with The Poor Little Boy with No Arms, by Mikel Murfi and One Duck (Dir. Oonagh Murphy). Ionesco’s The Lesson (Dir. Zoe Ni Riordan) and Nobody Smokes Anymore by Peter Sheridan (Dir. Aoibhinn Marie Gilroy).
Lisa holds a First Class Honours B.A. in Drama & Theatre Studies from the Samuel Becket Centre, TCD, specializing her advanced studies in Acting & Devising. She became a Fellow of Speech, Drama and Communications in 2014 and has an L.L.C.M Teaching Dip. with London College of Music. She also trained at Lee Strasbourg Theatre & Film Institute, NYC and in Contemporary Irish Theatre and Practice at the Lir Academy.
Lisa is a founding member Talking Shop Ensemble. Lisa performs, devises and produces original theatre plays with the company (winners of Best Ensemble 2014, Best New Writing 2013, Lir Revival Award 2013). Productions include Advocacy, Death of the Tradesman, I am a Home Bird (It’s Very Hard) and Do you Read Me?
Sue Mythen
Laban Movement for Actors
Sue teaches Movement in The Lir Academy, TCD for the BA (Hons) Acting and MFA Directing as well as convening a course for the M Phil. Theatre & Performance at The Beckett Centre, TCD. She worked as an actor for over fifteen years prior to completing and MA in Actor Movement at Central School of Speech & Drama, London. Since then she has worked as a freelance Movement Director in theatre and opera and film. Her work includes Twelfth Night, The Plough and the Stars, 16 Possible Glimpses, The Rivals, The House, Major Barbara and Pygmalion at The Abbey Theatre, Elektra for Canadian Opera Company, Coraline for Puca Puppets, Semele for RIAM, Dead Man Walking for Opera Ireland and on film, Sue choreographed the ballroom scenes for Northanger Abbey.
Stav Dvorkin
Stage Combat
Stave is an actor, stuntman, stage combat instructor and fight choreographer. He began his training with the Irish Dramatic Combat Academy and went on to become a fully qualified instructor. He spent 3 years training as an actor with Bull Alley theatre training company where he engaged in several theatre productions at the civic theatre including Dracula Macbeth and The Crucible. His theatre credits include Big Love (Abbey Theatre), Merchant of Venice (Devise+Conquer), Measure for Measure (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), Spartacus(Whiplash), War of the Rose’s trio (Whiplash). As a fight director he worked on Footloose (Stillorgan Musical Company), Romeo and Juliet (Devise+Conquer), Romeo and Juliet (Marino College ). Since 2011 he has been working as a professional stuntman on film and TV.
Paul Brennan
Michael Chekhov Techniques
Paul has worked as a professional actor, director, playwright, and acting teacher for over thirty five years. He has worked as a director with the Abbey, the Gate and other Dublin theatres, with Druid in Galway, with Island in Limerick and with Red Kettle in Waterford for whom he has directed two Bernard Farrell premieres and five other shows. Productions in the past twelve years include Diarmuid de Faoite’s award winning Padraig O’Conaire; Paris Texas with POC Productions which won an award at the 2003 Dublin Fringe Festival. His production of The Fairgreen Slaughterhouse by Colm Corless won Best Production at Project ’06 in Galway and was revived in May’07 at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. He recently directed Pigtown by Mike Finn for Belltable in Limerick, and the Brian Boru weekend in Killaloe, this spring.
Having studied Michael Chekhov acting technique and attended workshops with Joanna Merlin, Fern Sloan, Sarah Kane, Per Brahe, Graham Dixon, Lenard Petit and with the Michael Chekhov Europe organisation, Paul first introduced Chekhov technique into his professional work in 1999 (Bernard Farrell’s Happy Birthday Dear Alice for Red Kettle) and in his subsequent productions.
Sara Shephard
Alexander Technique
See alexandertechniquenorthside.ie
Dr. Margot Jones (NicEoghain)
Consultant
Margot trained in the theory and practice of theatre in Ireland, the USA and Vietnam. She has performed in a wide variety of professional contexts including theatre, television and film, and she maintains a vibrant performance and workshop practice. Recent facilitation work with young people includes puppet-making and performance, story-building and voice and movement skills. She has also a special interest in therapeutic theatre. Margot continues to update her professional skills and is currently researching in the area of the traditional arts and devised performance. She has lectured at the University of Hawai’i and at Trinity College, Dublin, and she holds an MA in Theatre (Villanova), a PhD in Asian Theatre (Hawai’i)and an MA in Dramatherapy (Roehampton).