10:15 - 11:15

 Jason Byrne will facilitate a workshop focusing on various approaches to text and acting as practised by his company Loose Canon. The emphasis will be on the search for authentic action and the investigation of certain techniques useful in breathing life into text. 

Biography 

 Jason Byrne’s most recent production was Comedy of Errors at the Abbey Theatre where he has also directed Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Turgenev’s A Month in the Country in a version by Brian Friel, Judas of the Gallarus by Donal O’Kelly, Living Quarters by Brian Friel, Treehouses by Elizabeth Kuti and Observatory by Daragh Carville. He was Staff Director at the Abbey Theatre from1988 to 2000. 

 Jason is Artistic Director of Loose Canon Theatre Company where he directed Phaedra’s Love (winner of an Irish Times Theatre Awards for Best Production in 2008), The Maids by Jean Genet, Julius Caesar, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Measure for Measure, The Duchess of Malfi, The Spanish Tragedy, Coriolanus (for which he received a Ford Sunday Independent Spirit of Life Award), The White Devil, Hamlet, In the Dark Air of a Closed Room, Macbeth (winner of Best Production Dublin Fringe 2001), Hedda Gabler, Fragments of a Dead Performance (nominated Sexiest Production Dublin Fringe 2003), Medea (a work in progress), h (an original performance based on Hamlet and The Orestia (nominated for a Judges' Special Award at The Irish Times Theatre Awards 2005) and Waterfront Wasteland, Medea Material, Landscape with Argonauts. 

 Other work includes A Piece of Monologue, Not I, What Where by Samuel Beckett, Wedding Day at the Cro Magnons’ by Wajdi Mouawad (Bedrock Productions), Wall of Cloud by Raymond Deane (Opera Theatre Company), A Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy and Festen by David Eldridge (Company Theatre, Toronto). 

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