Louth & Meath Arts Offices are pleased to announce the successful recipients for their Age & Opportunity Tyrone Guthrie Residency Awards for 2024. The awards, in partnership with Age & Opportunity, aim to support professional artists aged 50+ to develop their practice, by creating time and space to think and reflect on their work and to bolster their peer network. The awards were opened for applications in May and two artists (one based in Meath and one in Louth) have been selected to receive a funded week-long residency in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre including a small stipend.
Louth Arts Office is delighted to announce Dara Higgins as the Louth winner of the 2024 Louth/Meath Age & Opportunity Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency Award. When asked about the award, Dara commented: “I was delighted to receive this bursary, and can’t wait to get to Annaghmakerrig. Hopefully it will be the first of many visits.”
Meath Arts Office has also announced Ronan Leahy as the Meath winner of the 2024 Louth/Meath Age & Opportunity Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency Award. Ronan commented:
“I am sincerely delighted to be a recipient of the Meath/Louth Age and Opportunity Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency Award 2024. For me, time is often the enemy in the creative process as you are normally working towards a fixed deadline. This award will allow me the time and space, away from family life, to dream big in the beautiful surroundings of Annaghmakerrig. I look forward to meeting and talking with other resident artists and learning about their individual practices.”
Louth and Meath Arts offices are delighted to partner with Age and Opportunity for these bursary awards. Age & Opportunity is the national organisation that provides a range of opportunities for older people who want to get more involved in arts and culture, sport and physical activity, civic engagement and personal development.
Dara Higgins
Dara Higgins is a screenwriter, short story writer and musician. For the last decade, Dara’s been a key writer on the Irish soap, Fair City. Dara’s short stories have been published by The Irish Times, Howl – New Irish Writing, Iota Magazine, God’s Cruel Joke, and variously online, and is a two-time Pushcart Nominee. Dara’s graphic story collaboration with the artist Eoin Whelelan placed second in the Irish Times National Graphic Short Story prize and they continue to work together on projects. Dara lives in Drogheda, County Louth, with his family and a small army of overly-indulged cats.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Dara has recently moved towards children’s content by developing and writing the RTE Jr. podcast, Chance of a Ghost. The podcast, a comedic take on ghost hunting in Ireland, will premiere at Halloween 2024. Dara will be contributing music, a theme tune, and voices to the production. The experience of writing for a younger audience pushed Dara to develop Gad and Zooks a kid’s TV show set in a medieval Knight School with co-writer Carol Walsh which is in development with CBBC. Dara’s darkly comic morgue-based pilot, Dead Inside, has been optioned by Hat Trick Productions.
Ronan Leahy
Ronan is a freelance actor/director from Meath where he lives with his wife and two teenage children. As a performer, he has toured extensively both nationally and internationally, gaining a vast and varied experience of performance styles and disciplines. In 2019, he graduated with a distinction from the M.F.A. degree course in Theatre Directing at The Lir Academy in Dublin.
THEATRE ACTING: Work at the Abbey includes Translations, Oedipus, King Lear, Drum Belly, Curse of the Starving Class, Macbeth, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, Da, Living Quarters, Observatory, Observe the Sons of Ulster, At Swim-Two-Birds, The Passion of Jerome, By the Bog of Cats, The Well of the Saints, Philadelphia Here I Come, The Doctor’s Dilemma and The Corsican Brothers.
Other theatre includes Agreement, Translations (Lyric). Quake (Once Off). Least Like the Other (INO). Signatories, Borstal Boy (Verdant). Wuthering Heights, An Enemy of the People, Festen, All My Sons (Gate Theatre). Hecuba, The Effect, The Critic, Travesties, Life is a Dream, Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer (Rough Magic). The Colleen Bawn, Gentrification (Druid). The Winter’s Tale, The Hairy Ape (Corcadorca). Medea, Titus Andronicus and La Musica (Siren). Moment (Tall Tales). Gagarin Way (Island). Pyrenees (Hatch). Creditors (C Company). Invitation to a Journey (Coisceim). Tiny plays for Ireland and America, Inside the GPO, End of the Road, Whereabouts, The Flesh Addict (Fishamble). Roberto Zucco, Pale Angel, Wideboy Gospel and Melon Farmer (Bedrock). Romeo and Juliet (Second Age).
THEATRE DIRECTING: Shakespeare at Solstice, Click, Giddyup’s Way, Through the Window, Political Circus, But You Stopped Their Hearts, Changing Tides, Incognito, Watch, What Do We Do When Words Collapse, The Aviator, Tara Has Written a Play, and After Miss Julie.
TV/FILM ACTING: The House Across the Street, The Flag, Pursuit, Out of Innocence, Gridlock, The Break, Jack Taylor, Amber, Angel, Single-Handed, Proof, Blood Coloured Moon, Roy, The Catalpa Rescue, Batman Begins, and Amongst Women.
