Susannah Al Fraihat is an Irish-Jordanian writer and emerging playwright. Her debut play, Fruit for Thought, was produced by Landmark Productions in association with Theatre for One, Octopus Theatricals, NY, and Cork Midsummer Festival in 2024. Her current interest is writing plays which use fruit as a metaphor for migration, creating a space for migrant stories, particularly Arab migrants, on Irish stages. Her ‘Fruit series’ as she calls these plays, uses humour (sometimes dark) and complex characters (sometimes not nice), to tell stories about loss, identity, cultural appropriation, and exchange, in innovative, evocative, and (always) entertaining ways. 

Susannah will be developing her second play in her Fruit series, Forbidden Fruit, which reveals the bittersweet truths of migration, with the support of the Axis Assemble programme.

Laura is an actor and theatre maker from Dublin. Her previous work includes Dogshit (Theatre503), Knit Your Own Boyfriend (Golden Goose), Hell & Other Holidays (The Old Red Lion), Wolfie (The Orange Tree), Girlplay (Edinburgh Fringe), The Roaring Banshees (Smock Alley). For screen Laura’s work includes Grillied Cheese (Black House Pictures), Chestnuts (Show Piece Films) and Proclaim! (Three Hot Whiskeys). Her self-created work includes Dead & Kicking (Camden People’s Theatre), TINS (Scene + Heard), Soft Places (short film), How Far, Antigone? (Theatrelabor).

As an Axis Assemble artist, Laura aims to develop her playwriting skills while writing her first full length play, Adelphi ’63. This is a fictional celebration of real life events; The Beatles only concert in Dublin where four thousand teenagers rioted on lower Abbey St. She is interested in this visceral reaction to a boy band in the context of Catholic Ireland in 1963 and in exploring the resilience of joy in working class communities.

Cara Christie is a Cork writer and actor. Highlights from her acting career have been performing with Brokentalkers and Conflicted Theatre Cork, screen work like Kin and Freud’s Last Session. Cara wrote, produced and performed in her debut short film, "Not Today, Not Tomorrow" directed by Tommy Fitzgerald. In 2020, she was chosen as one of Dublin Fringe Festival’s Fringe Lab 50 artists. Her debut play Influenced was selected for rehearsed readings by Prime Cut Productions, the SJT in Scarborough and Scene & Heard. After receiving Arts Council Agility Awards to research. Brambles and her third play, Capture, the Lyric Theatre commissioned Cara to write the first draft of Brambles. In June 2025, Capture was part of Process, a work in development showing in the Cork Midsummer Festival in association with Cork Theatre Collective. Brambles will have a full production as part of Dublin Fringe Festival in The New Theatre in September 2025.

Maria is an actor, theatre maker and cabaret artist from Galway City. She graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting in 2023 and has a background in Costume and Set Design. Her most recent acting credits include ‘Small Town, Big Story’ (Sky TV) and Pegasus The Clothes Horse (Wexford Opera House). Maria likes creating experimental multidisciplinary theatre that confronts social taboos and speaks to the neurodivergent and queer experience. Through drag, clown, cabaret, music, film and puppetry, she interrogates gender, class and sexuality in modern day Ireland. She received the Galway Creative Practitioner Bursary Award in 2024 and subsequently went on to develop ‘PORNO’, a clown show that explores communication around sex in Ireland. ‘PORNO’ was devised and performed by clowning duo ‘Lipstink’ (Saorla Rodger and Maria Cunningham). It was programmed at Scene + Heard Festival 2025 and is currently in further development. 

Maria will use the Axis Assemble programme to develop the first draft of her brand new three-hander play.

Jen Harrington is a multimedia artist working across crochet, lacemaking, digital art, photography and video. She focuses on themes of place, nature, grief, connection and traditions. As well as her solo practice, Jen is passionate about creative community projects and has contributed to projects with Meakstown Community Centre, Dublin Canvas, Ballymun is Brilliant, Phizzfest, Disrupt Disability Arts Festival and more.

Jen’s bursary project will explore fungi in Ballymun - where they live, what they touch, and the ways in which we could be more like them. Through local surveying and collecting, in conjunction with Ballymun biodiversity action groups, Jen will try to connect with the often-unseen world of fungi, and to develop experimental work in response to this connection. Interaction with today’s Ballymun is a key part of the bursary project, and through the lens of fungi, Jen will explore themes of symbiosis, mutual nourishment, repair, community and grief within Ballymun.

Eimear Hussey is a freelance theatre-maker with a practice that spans writing, costume design, and costume making for theatre and dance. While she makes work for audiences of all ages, a large strand of her work is centred on theatre for young audiences and youth theatre practice. Recent writing credits include ‘Like We Were Born to Move’ (Peacock Theatre, 2023), and ‘Tales of the Inventor and the Pirate’ (NEST Project, Draíocht, 2024). Recent design credits include ‘Fancy Dan’ (Temperance Hall, 2025). Her writing is often responsive, collaborative, and heavily informed by her design practice. Across all strands, she values sustainability, and work where design is a key storytelling language. She also currently works as the Literary Assistant at Fishamble.

Eimear will use her time on the Axis Assemble programme to research and develop her new show, Threadcrumbs. Threadcrumbs looks at where our clothes come from, our relationships to them, and where they go after we're done with them. It tracks our garments from fields to factories, to warehouses to wardrobes, through to second-hand markets, landfills and beaches. It asks audiences to look at how we got here, and asks where we go next. She will develop the show informed by workshops with Irish teenagers, as well as interviews with those working at different stages in the chain.

Cian Jordan is a theatremaker, designer and performer from Dublin. His work explores the connection between design and contemporary culture in Ireland. Cian performed his debut show, ‘Failed by Design’ at Dublin Fringe Festival 2022 and at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023. His second show, ‘DublinLand’ debuted at Dublin Fringe Festival 2023 before touring across Ireland and the UK. In 2024 he presented ‘A Good Room’ as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, where he transformed his own home into a series of vibrant performance spaces. He has appeared on screen in the multi-award-winning short ‘Punchline’ and ‘Stutterbug’. He was previously a member of Fringe Lab 50 and a founding member of Hysteria Comedy Collective, a multidisciplinary group dedicated to promoting the voices of queer, female and neurodiverse voices in Irish comedy.

During the Axis Assemble programme, Cian will create a new performance piece about religion, grief and web design.

Chris is an opera and theatre director. He was artistic director of North Dublin Opera, and works extensively with companies such as Irish National Opera, Opera Collective Ireland, and Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier. Directing highlights include The Magic Flute, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, and the Irish premiere of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon. He wrote and co-directed the one man show Twenty Minutes From Nowhere with Bewley’s Cafe Theatre and Crave Productions, which has toured to venues nation-wide.

Chris will use his time on the Axis assemble programme to develop the libretto of a new opera for young audiences, in collaboration with composer Norah Constance Walsh.

Amy Kidd is a playwright/actor who trained at The Lir. Her debut play BREAKING premiered in Dublin Theatre Festival 2024, produced by Fishamble, directed by Jim Culleton and published by Bloomsbury: Methuen Plays. She is currently working on three new plays at various stages of development: YULETIDE, KASBAH and THIS IS NOT A ROM-COM. She is a co-founder of award-winning company Anseo Anois Theatre (Let’s Try Swingin’, The Pride) and works within the company both as an actor and a writer. She is represented by Sovran Carey. Her most recent acting credits include: Keeping Vigil (Clonmel Junction Festival/Anseo Anois Theatre) Knock Once For Yes (24 Hour Plays, The Abbey), Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale (TV Series, AMC+)

David is living in a Rom-Com... or writing a Rom-Com... or... ? THIS IS NOT A ROM-COM centres around David (aspiring filmmaker) and Kate (woman in STEM). This modern Dublin story examines 90’s/00’s ‘Rom-Com’ conditioning and considers this in the context of romance dynamics today. The play is consciously in conversation with the Rom-Com’s that have come before it, but aims to be novel and surprising in form, structure and subject. Both a celebration and an interrogation of an era, a genre and people today.

Cormac Mac Gearailt is a multi-award-winning bilingual spoken word poet and creative writing teacher based in Dublin, Ireland. He is the current All-Ireland Poetry Slam Champion, and the UNESCO Cities of Literature Slamovision Champion (for an Irish language poem). He has performed at festivals across Ireland - including a solo show at Listowel Writers’ Week in 2024, and has staged four one-person unfinished shows.

Cormac will use the Axis Assemble bursary to develop a new bilingual theatre piece in Irish and English, dealing with themes of family, intergenerational trauma, language and heritage loss, alcohol addiction, Irish history and folklore.

Cathal is a theatre maker, writer and dramaturg based in Dublin. His credits as theatre maker include Always Alone Together, MOOP (both Dublin Fringe Festival) and Welcome To The Memory Palace (Live Collision) all under the company name Game Theory. Cathal’s work is supported by multiple funding bodies and organisations, including the Arts Council, Baboró Festival, Mermaid Arts Centre, Pavilion Theatre and Théâtre de la Pire Espèce (Canada.) In 2025 Cathal was awarded the Dun Laoghaire - Rathdown Mountains to Sea Writing Bursary to develop his new play Life During Wartime. 

The Haunted Dolls’ House uses object manipulation, storytelling performance and live camera editing to adapt three classic ghost stories of the stage: Bram Stoker’s The Judge’s House, E. F. Benson’s The Room in the Tower, and the title story by M. R. James. Drawing on the visual aspects of these Victorian tales, the project brings together live image creation, narration and digital technology to create a theatre-cinema hybrid. As interest in the paranormal once again rises during an era of anxiety and war, this project playfully yet rigorously examines the reasons why ghost stories never die.

Sinéad is a multidisciplinary artist from Kildare, working across the mediums of theatre, multimedia, and the written word. She is a graduate of Dublin City University's MSc in Emerging Media programme, and she holds additional qualifications in Directing For Theatre (Maynooth University) and Drama Facilitation (Youth Theatre Ireland). Recent theatre directing credits include "Hue & Cry" (The Moat Theatre), "FREE DRUGS AND KILLER WHALES" (Scene + Heard Festival Of New Work), and "The Leaving" (Riverbank Arts Centre). Her writing has been published in magazines such as ROPES Literary Journal, The Martello, and Spellbinder Quarterly. She was recently selected to take part in the NASC Network's 2026 Young Curators programme in partnership with Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise.

Sinéad will use her time on the Axis Assemble programme to write, research, and develop a new darkly comic two-hander play about domesticity, dream homes, dereliction, and how young adults cope (or don't) with living in a housing crisis.

Deirdre Murphy is a songwriter, singer, musician, playwright and writer, with a professional background in dance and circus. She writes gig theatre which envisions a new way of existing, always rooted in social critique and the feminist aesthetic. Each piece creates a journey through human nature, delivered with humor and consideration for the soul. Deirdre grew up in rural Alaska with a profound connection to nature, and lived and travelled throughout the US before moving to Ireland. 

Deirdre is experimenting in gig theatre, an undertaking of song, monologue, rap, sci-fi spoken word, dance and physical theatre almost operatic in scale. Through the bursary period she intends to develop and refine her work into a tightly crafted, coherent, and impactful show under the name Queen Dragon. In addition Deirdre is looking forward to mentorship to clarify process, dramaturgical support, and becoming part of the community at Axis.

Trudy is a Tallaght based actor and theatre maker. Trudy has a particular interest in immersive theatre, movement and exploring social issues. She graduated from the BA (Hons) Drama (Performance) degree in TU Dublin in 2024 with a first-class honors. In 2025 Trudy set up D’Girlos theatre group along with Sophie O’Toole to create space for working class art in our theatres. Their debut Play "That's Sooo Povo" has been selected to be part of Dublin Fringe festival 2025. Trudy has a deep connection with and is heavily involved with local community arts and has a keen interest in exploring the connections between communities through drama and theatre.

“Quick Pick”  is a semi verbatim piece exploring the experience of  living with Chronic illness in the public healthcare system. Each patient has a number. And each number has a story. The play will explore the stories that get told and the ones that don’t.  It’s abstract, it’s immersive and it’s a story you can’t turn away from. This play won’t be a resolution but it’s a start of a conversation.

Brigid writes a column for the Irish Times that began as an exploration of living with invisible disability and has evolved to track the whims of life. She reviews literature for this same paper, alongside the publications Inis Magazine and Paper Lanterns. In 2021 she was awarded a New Word Award by Arts and Disability Ireland to collaborate with Sirius Arts Centre, where was a former digital writer in residence, to produce a book which will be published later this year. Other achievements include a range of bilingual audio stories for children in collaboration with Super Paua, and a two-month residency on Cape Clear Island which culminated in the publication of an Irish language picture book for children. A second publication is currently on its way. Brigid has had poetry published in Ogham Stone journal, RTÉ radio and ‘What Matters Most’ government report.

“Imagine you were the smallest creature in the ocean. What would the world sound like?” With the support of dramaturg Em Ó Cheallaigh, and the Axis Ballymun team, Brigid will develop a bilingual play for children. Idir Ghaeilge agus Bhéarla, we follow Finn, nephew to the world-renowned meditation guru, Algis. Unlike his uncle, Finn is useless at meditation. “Every time he tried to imagine a small creature, his mind would wander. He would see a gigantic fiend, with a behemoth bellow to match. ‘Why are you wearing electric blue pants” he would… Argh sorry I’m getting distracted again! The play will explore imagination, neurodiversity and our unique perceptive experience.

Favour Odusola is a Nigerian-Irish multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and dance theatre performer based in Dublin. Favour’s work explores identity, resilience, and cultural storytelling through Afro and contemporary dance. He is the founder of UMA and co-founder of UMAKOKO and JAIVA, platforms that promote Afro-dance education, performance, and community development. His practice merges traditional African movement with contemporary performance, creating bold, immersive work for stage, screen, and community spaces.

He is continuing development on his dance piece Rooted and Rising, which began at Axis during rehearsals for the Scene + Heard Festival. This work explores the life journey of a dancer—from beginning to end—reflecting on questions he’s long held as an artist. Told in five phases, it moves through silence and shared community, Nigerian traditional dance, self-doubt, resilience through cultural roots, and finally, a fusion of Afro, African contemporary, and urban styles. Each phase expresses emotions of self-discovery, fear, rebirth, and cultural integration, capturing the universal human experience through rhythm, movement, and collaborative storytelling.

Luka Costello is a performer and theatremaker from Dublin. She is an alumni of Dublin Youth Theatre and a graduate of the Theatre Performance Studies course at Inchicore CFE. In 2021 and 2022, Luka toured with Pan Pan as a performer in their production; ‘The First Bad Man’.In 2023, Luka co-founded the ‘Prima Donna Collective’ with fellow artist Conrad Jones-Brangan. She is the writer and lead performer in their debut project ‘If You Think This Show Is About You, It Probably Is’. She was also the assistant director for ‘Spirits Unsurrendered’, a site specific opera in Kilmainham Gaol co-produced by ThenThis and RIAM.She is currently the Programme & Communications Manager of Dublin Youth Theatre. 

Conrad Jones Brangan is an actor, musician, and sound designer based in Dublin. He is a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting (2019) as well as Inchicore College FE (2015). As an actor he has toured both nationally and internationally with shows such as Hamlet, Macbeth (GSA, National Tour, 2023) and Animal Farm (Theatre du, Heron European Tour 2022). He has acted for the hit Irish language kids game show ANFA which is currently showing on Cúla 4. Recenet composer and sound designer credits include: Julius Caesar Variety Show (2024), Sea Legs (2024), and Síog (2023). Conrad is a co-founder of the 'Prima Donna Collective' and is the sound designer for their debut project ‘If You Think This Show Is About You, It Probably Is’ (2025). As a solo artist, he has produced and recorded his one man cabaret concept album The Liquid Cabaret (2020), which is available to stream on Spotify and Apple music. He is currently working on his new multi lingual album (Far More I Fear Mór).

Prima Donna Collective is a performance collective based in Dublin, formed in 2023. The collective is spearheaded by Luka Costello and Conrad Jones-Brangan, artists who are looking to make fun, emotionally driven pieces that capture what it means to be a young artist in Ireland. Our collective aims to be a network for artists to collaborate and create a shared vision and push the boundaries of the theatrical format. They have a particular focus on style and decadence. Their debut project ‘If You Think This Show Is About You, It Probably Is’ will premiere August 2025 in The New Theatre

With the Axis Assemble bursary, they will spend one week workshopping songs and scenes for the cabaret piece: ‘There Will Be No Muppets’. Exploring a shared delusion between two best friends, ‘There Will Be No Muppets' is a surreal show breaking apart a dark workplace comedy, a nostalgia-filled cabaret, and a cry of pain from starving artists. The work done during the programme will go towards developing the first full draft of the script for this project.

Charli is a circus artist, creative producer of The Scarlett Collective and an aspiring immersive performance-maker working at the intersection of circus, storytelling and audience interactivity. Her practice is inspired by open world game mechanics and escape room-esque mysteries to unlock a narrative piece by piece- all to give audiences a deeply interactive experience and an active role in the show. As a recipient of the 2025 Axis Assemble bursary, she is currently developing a new immersive project that explores split-perspective storytelling and intersecting narrative threads. She is passionate about evolving her immersive work and is excited to explore visual storytelling in unconventional spaces through her bursary at Axis!

Charlotte is an actor and emerging writer born to parents of Irish, French, Chinese and Vietnamese currents. Charlotte was a recent participant in The Abbey Theatre’s Box of Trick playwriting programme, She trained at Drama Centre London and is interested in writing that reveals the turbulent nature of a conformed identity, and what lies beneath the silences between us. Charlotte has facilitated and performed for Cork Community Art Link, where access and freedom to make street theatre, by and for othered people, is fundamental in creating true community