TRADE / Mary Motorhead

Naomi Louisa O'Connell made her professional debut in 2012, starring on London’s West End as Sharon Graham in Terrence McNally’s Tony Award-winning play Master Class. A singer, actress and cabaret artist, her recent engagements include recitals at Carnegie Hall, Stanford University, and Rockefeller University; Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony with L’Orquestra Jovem do Estado de Sao Paulo; her one-woman German cabaret FRAU at New York’s Neue Galerie; a workshop of Richard Nelson’s new play Oblivion with Lincoln Center Theater; and performances with Geneva Opera, Opera Omaha and Spoleto Festival USA.

She appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony as Mélisande in the Maeterlinck play Pelléas and Mélisande and will return for the same role in the Debussy opera, conducted by Louis Langrée. Notable operatic roles include Monteverdi’s Poppea with Oper Frankfurt, Cherubino with Welsh National Opera and Opera Atlanta, and Offenbach’s La Périchole with Garsington Opera.

As an actress, she made her U.S. stage debut as Rosine/Countess Almaviva in The Figaro Plays of Beaumarchais at the McCarter Theatre and recently played the role of Lilli Vanessi/Kate in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. Prizes include the first prize in both the Caruso/Altamura International Singing Competition and Concert Artists Guild Competition in 2011.

Hailed by the New York Times as “a natural in the recital format” for her Carnegie Hall debut recital entitled Witches, Bitches, and Women in Britches at Weill Recital Hall, she has performed in concert venues across the USA, and maintains an active recital career. A proud graduate of the Juilliard School and Royal Irish Academy of Music, Ms. O’Connell is currently based in New York City.

Learn more at NaomiOConnell.com.

Marc Kudisch has been a uniquely creative powerhouse on Broadway, modern opera, television and film for the past 30 years, most recently wrapping up his costarring turn in Girl from the North Country, his 15th Broadway show.

He has been nominated for the Tony Award three times, as Trevor Graydon in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Baron Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Franklin Hart in 9 to 5, and is a Drama Desk Award winner for his work Off Broadway in The Wayside Motor Inn.

And when not onstage, Marc can be seen on the big and small screens on such projects as Brian Koppelman and David Levine’s Billions, David Fincher’s Mindhunter, Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane, Mindy Kaling’s Late Night and Ben Englund’s The Tick.

When not at work, you'll find him hanging out with his wife and Australian Shepherds, or just chilling playing his guitar.

Learn more at MarcKudisch.net.com.

Emma O’Halloran is an Irish composer and vocalist. Freely intertwining acoustic and electronic music, O’Halloran has written for folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony orchestra, film, and theatre. For her efforts, she has been praised by I Care If You Listen editor-in-chief Amanda Cook for writing “some of the most unencumbered, authentic, and joyful music that I have heard in recent years,” and has won numerous competitions, including National Sawdust’s inaugural Hildegard competition and the Next Generation award from Beth Morrison Projects.

O’Halloran’s music aims to capture the human experience, exploring complex emotions felt in specific moments in time. This approach has found a wide audience: her work has been featured at the international Classical NEXT conference in Rotterdam, the Prototype Festival in New York, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and MATA Festival. Additionally, her music has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Khemia Ensemble, ~Nois Saxophone Quartet, the Refugee Orchestra Project, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.

O’Halloran holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University and is currently working as a freelance composer. Current and future projects include works for F-PLUS, Friction Quartet, an orchestra commission, a large-scale work for Crash Ensemble, and an opera called TRADE.

Learn more at Emma-OHalloran.com.

Mark O‘Halloran is a writer and actor from Ennis, County Clare, Ireland. As an actor he has worked with all the major theater companies in Ireland, most recently in the acclaimed production of The Importance of Nothing with Pan Pan theater company and The Shadow of a Gunman with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. On screen he has appeared in numerous films, most notably as one of the eponymous heroes in Adam & Paul, for which he also wrote the screenplay, and the lead role of MP in History’s Future directed by Fiona Tan, for which he was nominated as Best Actor at the IFTA awards 2017. Most recently he played the role of Craigy in Shane Meadow’s TV series for Channel 4, The Virtues. He also appears in Darklands and Dead Still, as well as the upcoming Sky Italy TV series, Devils.

His writing credits include the multi-award-winning films Garage and Adam & Paul, as well as the television series Prosperity. He also wrote Viva, a Spanish-language feature set in Havana, Cuba. His latest screenplay, Rialto, premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. His work has been seen at Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Telluride and Sundance film festivals. For the stage, he has written the play Trade and most recently contributed text to the award-winning theater production Lippy and co-wrote Beckett’s Room for Dead Centre theater company. He is currently adapting Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends for the BBC and Hulu.

He has been nominated for numerous awards including a European Film Award for the screenplay of Adam & Paul, Irish Film and Television Awards where he won for both Best Screenplay and Best TV writer 2007. He also won the London Evening Standard award for Best Screenplay in 2005. Trade was named as best play at the Irish Theatre Awards 2012. Lippy was Best Production at 2014 Irish Theatre Awards as well as winning a Fringe First at Edinburgh and 2 Obie Awards in New York. Viva was shortlisted for best foreign language Oscar and nominated for Best Screenplay at the IFTA awards 2016. In the 2020 IFTA’s Mark was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for The Virtues and Best Screenplay for Rialto.

Elaine Kelly is the Resident Conductor of Irish National Opera. Upon her appointment in late 2021, she conducted a national tour with Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse. She also conducted nine new works by Irish composers in INO’s internationally praised 20 Shots of Opera in 2020 as well as the film of Amanda Feery’s A Thing I Cannot Name which was streamed as part of the West Cork Literary Festival in July 2021. She held the position of Studio Conductor in INO’s ABL Aviation Opera Studio from 2019–21, and worked as assistant conductor and chorus director on performances of La Cenerentola, The Abduction from the Seraglio, La Bohéme, Elektra, Fidelio, Carmen, Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s The First Child, and films of Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse and Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.

In 2022 Elaine was invited to work as assistant conductor on Opéra National de Bordeaux’s production of L’elisir d’amore. In 2014 she won the inaugural ESB Feis Ceoil Orchestral Conducting Competition which led to engagements with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. She was Musical Director of the University of Limerick Orchestra (2019–21), the Dublin Symphony Orchestra (2017–19) and has worked with the National Symphony Orchestra, Dublin Youth Orchestra and Cork Concert Orchestra. She is a BMus and MA graduate of the MTU Cork School of Music.

She is an opera and theater producer, singer, and voice teacher with bachelor and master of music degrees and a master of fine arts in theater management/producing from the Yale School of Drama, as well as many years of experience in the development of new opera and theater works. She first cultivated her extensive experience in arts administration at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute where she served as administrative director for four years. Beth served a founding tenure as the Producer for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre from 2009-2011, as well as Producer for New York City Opera’s VOX: Contemporary American Opera Lab from 2010-2011.

Beth Morrison Projects is the realization of Beth‘s vision, which stems from a deep commitment to nurturing composers and other artists and fostering the development of new opera and other new music-theater works. Established in 2006, Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) identifies and supports the work of emerging and established living composers and their multi-media collaborators through the commission, development, production and touring of their works, which take the form of contemporary music-theater, opera-theater, and multi-media concert works. BMP has established itself as a composers’ producer and The New York Times said, “The production of new [opera] works in the city still falls mostly to the tireless Beth Morrison and her Beth Morrison Projects…”

Learn more at BethMorrisonProjects.org.

Tom Creed is a theater and opera director based in Dublin.

Opera and music theater productions include The Tales of Hoffmann and Vivaldi's Griselda with Irish National Opera, Owen Wingrave with the Opéra National de Paris and Opera Collective Ireland, Irish tours of Acis and Galatea,  The Human Voice and Susanna’s Secret for Opera Theatre Company, Mavra and The Bear with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and The Magic Flute, Suor Angelica, Mavra and Renard with the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

World premieres of new work include The Hunger by Donnacha Dennehy at Opera Theatre of St Louis and the BAM Next Wave Festival in New York, Private View by Annelies van Parys, produced by Muziektheater Transparant, at Opera Vlaanderen, Operadagen Rotterdam, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg and on tour, and air india [redacted] by Jürgen Simpson with Turning Point Ensemble in Vancouver,

Private View was awarded the FEDORA Rolf Liebermann Prize for Opera in 2014, Best Production at the Armel Opera Festival in Budapest in 2015, and was named by Music Theatre NOW 2015 as one of 14 notable productions “which are aesthetically innovative and reflect new developments in this genre” .

He was an Opera Hub associate artist of Opera Theatre Company in Dublin from 2015 to 2017.

He directed Vivaldi’s Griselda with Irish National Opera in Autumn 2019 and is developing a new opera with composer Michael Gallen for premiere in France and Ireland in 2021.

His extensive work as a theatre director includes productions with the Abbey Theatre, Gate Theatre, Rough Magic, Playgroup (which he co-founded in 2003) and a range of independent Irish companies, which have played in Ireland, the UK, Europe, the USA and Australia. He was nominated for Best Director at the Irish Times Theatre Awards in 2007.

His productions of Watt by Samuel Beckett with acclaimed Irish actor Barry McGovern has been presented at the Dublin Theatre Festival, Galway Arts Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Perth International Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Barbican Centre in London, the Public Theatre in New York and on tour in the USA.

Recent productions include extensive work in new writing, including Trade by Mark O’Halloran, which won Best New Play at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards 2011, and Shibari by Gary Duggan, at the Abbey Theatre as part of the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival, major contemporary plays by Martin Crimp, Jon Fosse, Christopher Shinn and Michel Tremblay, classic plays by Shakespeare and Calderón, devised and site-specific work including Berlin Love Tour, which was presented in Dublin, Cork and Birmingham. Most recently he has directed The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Skriker, Buddleia, O Go My Man and Into the Woods with graduating acting students at Dublin’s Lir Academy and Rising created with Helena Enright for Dublin Youth Theatre.

Tom was Festival Director of Cork Midsummer Festival from 2011 to 2013, and was nominated for an Irish Times Irish Theatre Award in 2012 “for original and dynamic use of local spaces at Cork Midsummer Festival”. He has previously been Theatre and Dance Curator of Kilkenny Arts Festival and Associate Director of Rough Magic Theatre Company, has worked as a guest curator for Dublin City Council and the British Council, and was a member of the EFFE International Jury for the European Festivals Association. He worked on the cultural program for Dublin’s bid to be European Capital of Culture in 2020, and has run masterclasses on festival management in Belgium and Russia for The Festival Academy.

Tom is a member of the steering group of the National Campaign for the Arts, and a member of Theatre Forum and IETM. He has previously been a board member of Macnas and Dublin Fringe Festival. He was artist in residence at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, in 2016/17 and 2018/19.

Learn more at TomCreed.org.

Alex Dowling is an award-winning Irish composer and producer. His current work involves repurposing AutoTune and other vocal effects to create strange and otherworldly extensions of the voice.

Recent projects include a commission from Irish National Opera to create a work for boy soprano as part of their 20 Shots of Opera project and a theatrical collaboration for the show There at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His album of electronic vocal works, Reality Rounds, was released on Carrier Records and is described as “an enthralling trance of live-processed vocals and synthesizers" (The Road to Sound). His work has been performed by many ensembles internationally including the Irish National Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Prism Saxophone Quartet, orkest de ereprijs, and Mivos String Quartet, and has been featured at festivals including Bang on a Can, MATA, and the Young Composers Meeting, Netherlands. He has also written music for theater and laptop orchestra, and his audiovisual installation Bodysnatcher was exhibited at the Eyebeam Gallery, NY and toured many other countries.

Dowling was recently named a MacDowell Fellow and an artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Awards include the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Jerome Hynes Composer Award, multiple Irish Arts Council Bursary Awards, and the West Cork Chamber Music Composition Award. He has an MPhil in Music & Media Technology from Trinity College, Dublin, and studied composition as a PhD fellow at Princeton University.

Jim Findlay works across boundaries as a theater artist, visual artist, and filmmaker. His work includes his original performances Vine of the Dead (2015), Dream of the Red Chamber (2014), Botanica (2012) and the direction and design of David Lang‘s the whisper opera as well as the unreleased 3D film Botanica. His video installation in collaboration with Ralph Lemon, Meditation, is in the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center. He was a founding member of the Collapsable Giraffe and in partnership with Radiohole founded the Collapsable Hole, a multi-disciplinary artist led performance venue recently relocated to Manhattan’s West Village.

In addition to his work as an independent artist, he maintains a long career as a collaborator with many theater, performance and music artists including Bang on a Can, Daniel Fish, Aaron Landsman, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Ridge Theater,  Ralph Lemon, the Wooster Group, Radiohole, Stew and Heidi Rodewald and Julia Wolfe.  His work has been seen at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Arena Stage, A.R.T. and over 50 cities internationally. In 2016 he received a Creative Capital Award for his project Electric Lucifer and in 2015 he received the Foundation for Contemporary Art Artist Grant.  He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 2012 and 2016. Other recognition includes two Obie Awards, two Bessie Awards, two Princess Grace Awards, a Lortel and a Hewes Awards and residencies at Baryshnikov Arts Center, UCross, MassMOCA and Mount Tremper Arts.

Learn more at JimFindlayNYC.com.

Montana Levi Blanco is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (BM Oboe Performance), Oberlin College (BA History), Brown University (MA Public Humanities), and the Yale School of Drama (MFA Design). Prior to attending Yale, he was the Robert L. Tobin Curatorial Intern at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.

His projects for 2022 include The Skin of Our Teeth and A Strange Loop, both opening on Broadway in April 2022; Emma O'Halloran's Mary Motorhead / TRADE for Irish National Opera; sandblasted by Charly Evon Simpson and White Girl In Danger by Michael R. Jackson at the Vineyard Theatre; (February 2022); 'Daddy' by Jeremy O. Harris at the Almeida Theatre in London; Epiphany by Brian Watkins at LCT/ Mitzi Newhouse; Mother Russia by Lauren Yee, at La Jolla Playhouse; and Grass by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at Signature Theatre.

Opera credits include Iphigenia (Kennedy Center), Hansel and Gretel (Houston Grand Opera) and La Rondine (Minnesota Opera).

Off-Broadway credits include: Fairview, Is God Is (SOHO REP); A Strange Loop, Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons); Ain't No Mo' (Public); The House That Will Not Stand, Red Speedo, Nat Turner (NYTW); Fabulation, The Death of the Last Black Man, In the Blood (Signature); Fefu and Her Friends, He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (TFANA); Pipeline, Ghost Light, War (Lincoln Center); ’Daddy’ (Vineyard/New Group); Dragon Spring, Phoenix Rise (The Shed); Eddie & Dave (Atlantic); Orange Julius (Rattlestick/Page 73); Distances Smaller (Advanced Begginer Group); The Last Match (Roundabout); and O, Earth (Foundry).

Regional credits include: Lempicka (Williamstown); Girls (Yale Repertory); Angels in America, An Octoroon (Berkeley Repertory); The Bluest Eye (Guthrie); Graveyard Shift (Goodman); Skylight (McCarter); Measure for Measure (California Shakespeare); Djembe! (Apollo Chicago); Zoyka’s Apartment (Princeton University); Our Country's Good, Side Show (Brown/Trinity Repertory); Madiba (Kennedy Center) and a number of shows at the Yale School of Drama.

Learn more at MontanaLeviBlanco.com.

Christopher Kuhl is a lighting, scenic, installation and conceptual designer for new performance, theatre, dance and opera based in Brooklyn. Recent work includes Straight White Men (Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, Wexner Center); This Was The End (Mallory Catlett, The Chocolate Factory); The Elephant Room (Edinburgh Fringe, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Philly Live Arts, Arena Stage, MCA Chicago); Quartier Libres with Nadia Beugré (New York Live Arts, Walker Art Center); Soldier Songs (Holland Festival); Ethel’s Documerica (BAM); and John Cage Song Books (San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall).

Chris has also had the pleasure of working and making art at On the Boards, the Fusebox Festival, the Kennedy Center, YBCA, Jacob’s Pillow, Beijing Music Festival, Queer Zagreb, KVS Belgium, MAC France, and Santiago a Mil Chile. Kuhl was also the production manger and lighting director for Ralph Lemon’s How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? In 2011 Chris was the recipient of the Sherwood, Drammy, Horton, and Ovation Awards. In 2014 Chris was nominated for a Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and was a finalist for the Rolex Mentor Protégé Award. Chris is originally from New Mexico, a graduate of CalArts, an associate artist of Hand2Mouth Theatre, and Co-Director of Live Arts Exchange (LAX).

Charles Hagaman is a freelance audio engineer and sound designer. In 2015, Charles joined the production team of the newly-opening National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, becoming production coordinator in 2018. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced cancellation of public events in early 2020, he became technical director of digital media for Live@NationalSawdust, an initiative of new concert performances recorded from artists’ homes in an effort to continue presenting bold new performances in a time without public gatherings.

From 2012 to 2015, he was technical director of the “scintillating”, “impeccably curated”, and “truly original” (Time Out NY) multimedia chamber music series Ear Heart Music, a “major cultural resource” (New York Arts) in New York City’s new music landscape.

Charles studied computer science at Lehigh University, music theory and composition at Westminster Choir College, and holds a masters of music technology in Tonmeister Studies from New York University. He recently relocated from Brooklyn to Westport, Connecticut.