When a piece of work is staged, do audience members and critics see onstage the same piece of work as do those who have created that work? Often, it feels that the answer is no - and is this such a bad thing? Interpretation is, after all, a highly individual experience. But often the chasm between interpretations can be truly striking, even shocking, and can have lasting repercussions for the longevity and the identity of the work. 

How should contexts for interpretation and understanding,between the audience, the critic and the artist, inform and influence one another, if at all? How can critic learn from artist and vice-versa? Where does the view of the audience member enter into this bind? This session will explore the questions, conflicts and also the possible collaborations to which this thorny dynamic gives rise. 

 Note: This session is one of a choice of sessions running in the same time slot . For more information please refer to the schedule. 

Biographies of panellists

 Peter Crawley is a freelance journalist and critic. He is News Editor and Web Editor of Irish Theatre Magazine, a contributor to The Irish Times and has written reviews and features for publications including The Sunday Business Post, The Sunday Times, The Dubliner and The Scotsman. 

His reviews have been broadcast on RTÉ Television, RTÉ Radio, Newstalk, BBC Ulster and Phantom FM. He has a degree in Theatre Studies and English Literature from Trinity College Dublin and holds a Masters in Journalism from the Dublin Institute of Technology. 

 Tom Creed is Associate Director of Rough Magic Theatre Company, and a co-founder and joint Artistic Director of Playgroup. He studied English and Philosophy at UCC, and trained as a director on Rough Magic’s SEEDS programme and at the National Theatre Studio, London. 

 Directing credits for Rough Magic include Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer, Life is a Dream, Attempts on her Life (for which he was nominated for Best Director at the 2007 Irish Times Theatre Awards), Dream of Autumn, and 4.48 Psychosis as part of the SEEDS 2 showcase. 

 He has directed all of Playgroup’s work to date: Say Hi To The Rivers And The Mountains (a music theatre piece by Jonathan Coe and the High Llamas for Note Productions and Dublin Docklands’ Analog festival); The Heights (a show based on Wuthering Heights at Project Arts Centre); The Art of Swimming (a show about long distance swimming in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cork, Dublin, Kinsale and Amsterdam, nominated for Total Theatre Award – Edinburgh Festival 2007, winner of Bewley’s Café Theatre Award – Dublin Fringe Festival 2007); The Train Show (a performance on a train with Once Off Productions for Cork Midsummer Festival); Dark Week (a large-scale promenade event at the Everyman Palace, nominated for Judges Special Award at The Irish Times Theatre Awards 2005), Soap! (a live soap opera at Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe, Everyman Palace and a radio version on Red FM, nominated for Sexiest Show at Dublin Fringe Festival 2003 and PPI Award for Best Radio Drama 2004); Crave and Integrity (Granary Theatre). 

 Other directing credits include: The Last Mile (Blue Raincoat); Ian Wilson’s The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World with Gavin Friday at Brighton Festival and Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; Love's Labour’s Lost and Vinegar Tom (Samuel Beckett Centre); The Coming World (Making Strange); The Case of the Rose Tattoo (Dublin Theatre Festival); Mr Kolpert (Once Off Productions Rep Experiment at Dublin Fringe Festival); Mimic by Raymond Scannell (Cork, Galway, Kilkenny and Dublin); Love’s The Ideal Homes Show (Activate Youth Theatre); Purple (Dublin Youth Theatre); Older People for Beginners (Cork 2005’s Culture and Health programme); Crystal (Meridian). 

 He is a board member of the Dublin Fringe Festival and Theatre and Dance Curator for Kilkenny Arts Festival. 

 Sara Keating writes about theatre for The Irish Times, Irish Theatre Magazine and the Sunday Business Post. 

 In 2006 she received a PhD from the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College for her research on twentieth-century Irish theatre. 

 She currently teaches contemporary Irish theatre at New York University's Dublin centre, and at University College Dublin. 

 Jo Mangan is Artistic Director of The Performance Corporation. Recent directing credits for the company include Irish Times Theatre Award-winning The Nose (Project Arts Centre), JIG (St. Patrick’s Festival), Kiss (Ulster Bank commission for Dublin Theatre Festival), Lizzie Lavelle and the Vanishing of Emlyclough (Belmullet, Co. Mayo), Drive-By (Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival and Canterbury Festival), and Dr. Ledbetter’s Experiment (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Kilkenny Arts Festival) - Irish Times Theatre Awards Best Production nominee. 

 Other work for the company includes The Yokohama Delegation (Kilkenny Arts Festival co-production) which represented Ireland at the Prague Quadrennial Design Exhibition, Paka (Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya), the multi-award winning Candide, The 7 Deadly Sins, and the Stewart Parker Trust Award-nominated The Butterfly Ranch by Tom Swift. 

 Other theatre directing credits include; Beware of the Storybook Wolves (The Ark), Awimbaway, Mary Quirke, Moira and Dreamframe (Fishamble), Lost Letters of a Victorian Lady (Bewleys Theatre), A Place with the Pigs (Crypt Theatre), Look Back in Anger (City Arts Centre), Frank McGuinness’s Mary
and Lizzie (Dublin Theatre Festival), and The Magic Island (Yew Theatre). 

 Jo curates The Performance Corporation’s annual SPACE Programme, an international multidisciplinary artists’ residency at the company’s base in Castletown House, Co. Kildare. She has lectured, given workshops and presented on the company’s work at Trinity College, Queen’s University Belfast and UCD. A graduate of the Samuel Beckett Centre, Jo is a board member of Fishamble, Theatre Forum, Riverbank Arts Centre and The Association of Theatre Directors of Ireland.