Associate Artists

Our Associate Artist programme is a means by which The Civic seeks to actively support the professional and personal development of an artist over the long term whilst also encouraging and empowering the artist to enrich the creative culture of The Civic.
Current Civic Associate Artists:

Esosa Ighodaro 

Esosa is a British/Nigerian/Irish writer, director, and performer. She makes work for screen and stage. She is a Warner Discovery Scholar and an alumnus of X-Pollinator ELEVATOR, Baptiste Programme and The Writer’s Lab UK & Ireland. Her award-winning film work has been screened at film festivals across Ireland, US and Southern Africa. As well as having TV and film projects in development, Esosa continues to work with Irish theatres developing new work.
Her farce, DOWN WITH JAZZ received Arts Council Theatre Project Award funding in 2022 and has been selected for Screen Ireland’s Stage Spotlight Stage to Screen award. Her play, LET ME IN, was developed through Smock Alley’s Rachel Baptiste programme in 2022, and is currently being developed with The Everyman Theatre, Cork.
Esosa is currently developing TV projects with Deadpan Pictures and TriMoon Pictures. As a vocalist, Esosa works in a wide range of styles, in particular earning acclaim for her soulful renditions of traditional Irish music – soul ceol! She recorded her debut album “You Won’t Believe It” after touring extensively as a solo artist as well as a guest and backing
vocalist.
Her work aims to highlight black talent and tell more varied stories of black experiences.According to Esosa “I am particularly interested in this idea of what a Black Irish identity is – and feel like Tallaght and the Civic could be a great place to explore this. I am keen to encourage the creation of a larger body of work from Black Irish people. I’d love to get more people writing and thinking about what sorts of stories they want to tell of themselves and guide them through the process and possibilities”.

Adam Wyeth

Adam Wyeth is an award-winning poet, playwright and essayist, with five books published with Salmon Press. In 2016, he was selected as one of Ireland’s Rising Generation by Poetry Ireland Review.  In 2019, Adam received The Kavanagh Fellowship Award. In 2020, he was selected for an Abbey Theatre development programme, to adapt his next book about:blank into an audio-immersive piece, supported by The Civic Theatre. Following an Arts Council Literature Project Award, the work went on to premiere at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2021, with acclaimed actors Olwen Fouere, Owen Roe and Paula McGlinchey. Last year, Adam received an Arts Council Ireland Award to support the creation of my latest prose work, In Circles. This new work is a mythopoetic memoir and meditation on the form of a circle. 

Adam’s poetry collections are Silent Music (2011), Highly Commended by the Forward Poetry Prize, The Art of Dying (2016), an Irish Times Book of the Year. In 2013 Salmon published his essays, The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic Mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry, Foreword by Paula Meehan. This book has had several reprints and is used as a teaching tool around the world and has been officially added to two university programmes in the USA. Adam’s plays have been performed across Ireland and also in New York and Berlin. His first two plays Hang Up and Lifedeath were produced by Brokencrow in 2013, the second of which was selected as the play of the Triskel Festival by the Irish Examiner. His play This Is What Happened was published in 2019. His hybrid book about:blank was published in 2021 to critical acclaim.

In June 2021, Adam received the Live Music & Performance Scheme grant for a collaborative project ‘there will be no silence,’ with Emmy-nominated composer David Downes. The work, featuring world-renowned pianist Rolf Hind and virtuoso cellist Adrian Mantu, was performed by leading Irish actors Aisling O’Sullivan and Owen Roe. It is scheduled for release with Diatribe records, and will be showcased at the Dublin New Music Festival in 2024. With the assistance and support of the Civic Theatre, Adam is currently in the process of working on a live and multimedia installation of about:blank using AI and VR technology.

Adam has over twenty years teaching Creative Writing and is a longterm member of Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools Scheme.

In 2023, with the support of the Civic Theatre, Adam has collaborated with celebrated classical musicians in a unique performance reading from his dreamtime cinematic poem about:blank. Using electric cello and violin, Freytag and Leman’s evocative soundscape beautifully captures the hallucinatory world of Wyeth’s most ambitious work to date.
Adam says: ‘I firmly believe that creativity and art must be accessible to everyone and that they are integral to the essence of our humanity. Imagination serves as a conduit to the profound facets of our deeper selves, fostering connections that transcend differences and bring us closer together. Creativity, as I see it, involves the transformative process of taking various ideas and components and shaping them into something entirely new—a genuine form of magic and alchemy. My passion for poetry and Irish myth emanates from these perspectives. As both a writer and a creative writing teacher, I am deeply committed to engaging with communities of all ages and backgrounds and aiding them in harnessing their inner gold.’

Rob Murphy

Rob has just completed his masters degree in Theatre Practice at University College Dublin finishing with a first class honours. Bull Alley Theatre Training Company and Trinity Guildhall London were among his former institutions of training. Rob has been working professionally for the past seventeen years, and his work encompasses acting, performing, theatre directing, choreographing, producing, and writing.

He is well renowned for his performance as panto dame "Buffy" in the yearly pantomime production at Dublin’s National Stadium (previously The Tivoli Theatre) ‘Queen Of The Panto Dames’ (Irish Times). Other Career highlights include premiering the one man show ‘69 Shades Of Gay’ for Zac Productions at Smock Alley Theatre, playing the Wicked Witch in the Wizard Of Oz at the Helix, The Olympia Panto Dame in ‘Jack and The Beanstalk’ 2006 at the Olympia Theatre for Spotlight Productions and his own comedy cabaret show
‘Rob Murphy Let Loose’ which recently sold out at Dublin’s legendary Vicar St.

Since 2018 he has written, directed and produced in partnership with The Civic the annual professional panto production at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght which has been highly successful, entertaining over 16,000 patrons annually.  Rob has been an associate artist with the Civic for the last five years. Other collaboration work with the civic includes the Civic Theatre Summer Camp the musical theatre course has been running every Summer since 2013, a lot of past students have gone onto train in the performing arts full time both here and abroad. Last Halloween Rob collaborated on our inaugural Halloween Spooktacular a Halloween family musical show which played for 10 performances.  Rob is the artistic director of Dramatic Action Stage School with classes in Dublin, Kildare and Kilkenny and in 2018 won ‘Best School Director’ at the All- Ireland Dance Awards.

According to Rob ‘I have a profound belief in the transformative power of theatre. In a world filled with constant challenges, theatre serves as a captivating tool for escapism and not only entertainment but a catalyst for empathy, discussion, and societal reflection. As I continue to grow and develop new work I am most excited about creating theatre that breaks the rules and leaves audiences debating and discussing’.

Veronica Coburn

Veronica Coburn is a theatre artist of some 40 years’ experience. She founded Barabbas Theatre Company back in the 90s with Mikel Murfi and Raymond Keane. She has been Programme Director of TENDERFOOT, The Civic Theatre’s apprentice theatre programme for transition year students since its inception in 2007 and a Civic Theatre Associate Artist since 2017. Veronica is particularly interested in the idea of artistic voice. Specifically, she believes that people are inherently creative and that it is through creative endeavour that we seek to understand ourselves, our lives and the world in which we live. We do that by reflecting back on the past, exploring the here and now and imagining as yet unknown futures. This idea underpins her work with Tenderfoot which has seen in excess of 600 young people write original plays for the stage with approximately 90 produced on The Civic’s Main Stage.

Veronica is also interested in the rich territory that is revealed when professional artists and community participants collaborate and she has embedded this practice in a number of major projects that she has overseen as Artistic Director. Projects such as 2018’s
HOME THEATRE (Ireland) in Draíocht Arts Centre saw 30 professional playwrights paired with 30 people, Hosts, who lived in Dublin 15.

Having spent time together each playwright wrote an original piece, 20 minutes long, inspired by their Host. All 30 original plays were then produced in the Hosts’ homes, their kitchens, their living rooms, mapping the stories of people of D 15. Home Theatre plays performed to an audience of the Hosts’ friends, neighbours and families.

Veronica is currently working on NEST, Draíocht’s follow up to Home Theatre (Ireland). Nest will see 24 performance artists write original pieces inspired by 24 new Hosts. All Nest hosts will be children and young people, the youngest Host will be 20 days old and the oldest Host will be 20 years old. Nest will culminate in a festival, Spréacha SOAR, which will celebrate all 24 Nest works in Draíocht in March 2024.

Veronica has completed a number of big participatory projects in The Civic. Songs of Change, a response to life under lockdown, which culminated in 10 original songs inspired by the lived experience of people in South Dublin County and Ghost Hares, a celebration of the landscape and people of South Dublin County using spoken and sung text and original song – a SDCC Public Art Commission.

Veronica is in early development on a piece exploring the legacy of Article 41 of our Constitution in collaboration with Sinéad Diskin, Joe Lee and Sibéal Davitt. She will also work with Sibéal Davitt later this year to explore Full Body Mask with Amanda Coogan. She is currently working on works in development with a number of artists including Louise Lewis, Noelle Brown, Niamh Lawlor, Lesley Conroy & Gabrielle Breathnach. And she has worked with Niamh McGrath on a new version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, entitled Fools’ Macbeth, for 5 th /6 th class students.

Veronica is the author of Clown Through Mask – The Pioneering Work of Richard Pochinko As Practised By Sue Morrison, written in collaboration with Sue Morrison and published by Intellect Press. She has been awarded the Prix Europa/Radio France, World Gold Medal Status New York, and a Writers’ Guild of Ireland Zebbie Award for her work in radio drama.

As a Civic Theatre Associate Artist Veronica is interested in further exploring the idea of participation and play in collaboration with and inspired by the people and landscape of South Dublin County.

Davey Kelleher