PEOPLE

The Team:

Associate Artistic Director – Declan Gorman
Declan has been active in Ireland for over twenty years as a performer, writer, director, producer and arts policy expert. He was founding Artistic Director of Upstate. For Upstate Live he has written The Border Chronicles Trilogy 1998 – 2007, translated Gerhardt Hauptmann’s The Weavers and adapted Patrick Kavanagh’s The Green Fool. As well as directing the above, he has directed Macbeth, The Countrywoman and Two Houses. For Upstate Local he has been the resident writer and directed several community dramas. Prior to joining Upstate, he was co-founder and regular performer and producer with Co-Motion Theatre Company in the late 1980s and later Theatre Programme Director at City Arts Centre, Dublin. His work has covered innovative playwriting and teaching in community-engaged contexts; involvement in a vast range of policy initiatives including coordinating the Arts Council Review of Theatre in Ireland 1995 – 1996, chairing the Steering Group to establish Theatre Forum Ireland, chairing the erstwhile Abbey Theatre Outreach Education Working Group; and most recently working as a tutor on the New York University Study Abroad Programme in Community-Engaged Theatre. He is currently Chair of CityArts, Dublin. In 1999, he won a Stewart Parker Award for his first stage play, Hades. He has recently received an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College

Drama Development Officer - Declan Mallon
Declan Mallon is a co-founder of Upstate Theatre Project. He has been responsible for the projects predominantly under the Local and Learning banners of the Upstate policy. These have culminated in the production of fourteen performances in the last eight years. Before joining Upstate Theatre Project Declan worked as a freelance drama facilitator mainly based in Drogheda. He founded the Droichead Youth Theatre in 1992 while working as the Droichead Arts Centre's Drama Officer. Declan published a biography of the Irish artist Nano Reid in 1995. He completed his Masters in Theatre Studies in 2009.

The Board:

Dr. Matthew Stout (Acting Chairperson)
Carina McGrail
Andrea Murtagh
Kevin Smith
Bobby McCormack
Irene White
Hugh Doogan

Contract Staff:

Actors, tutors, design artists, production personnel, musicians, choreographers other staff are hired on a project-by-project basis. The company is an equal opportunities employer and has sought to create employment and training opportunities for people from the immediate region as well as drawing from the national pool of trained artists and production experts.

As well as the artists and production personnel it has worked with, Upstate has benefited from the participation and input of hundreds of individuals within the communities with whom it has collaborated since 1997.