Mary Moynihan, (she/her), MA, is an award-winning writer, director, theatre and film-maker, an interdisciplinary artist and one of Ireland’s most innovative arts and human rights artists creating work to promote the arts, human rights, climate justice, gender equality, diversity and peace. 

Mary is Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and works  collaboratively with artists and over 50 organisations across Ireland, Northern Ireland, Europe and internationally, using the arts to promote rights and values for all.   Company patrons of Smashing Times are Sabina Coyne Higgins, Senator Joan Freeman, founder of Pieta House, Ger Ryan, actor and Tim Pat Coogan, writer and historian. Founding patrons were writers Maeve Binchy and Brian Friel.

Mary’s work has won a number of awards including the Allianz Business to Arts Awards, a GSK Ireland Impact Award, a Dublin Bus Community Spirit Award, a National Lottery Good Cause Award, the international #ArtsAgainstCovid award, an Arts Council Project Award and an Arts Council Agility Award.

Mary is Artistic Curator for the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival implemented by Smashing Times and Front Line Defenders in partnership with Amnesty International, Fighting Words, ICCL,  NWCI, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Trócaire and Poetry Ireland, funded by The Arts Council. The aim of the festival is to showcase and highlight the extraordinary work of human rights defenders in Ireland and around the world, past and present, and the role of the arts and artists in promoting human rights today.

Mary’s artistic practice encompasses theatre, film, literature, poetry, and curatorship. Mary’s work focuses on primal, visceral and intuitive responses to vulnerability and conflict and an exploration of self and the other. Her work explores an interconnectedness of the body, voice and imagination, revealing the inner life through physical and spiritual energies and intuitive engagements. Mary has a focus on using historical memory in her artistic practice as inspiration for the creation of original artworks across a range of mediums, remembering stories of ordinary yet powerful women and men from history and today who stood up for the rights of others.

As a playwright, Mary’s work includes the highly acclaimed The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII co-written with Paul Kennedy, Fiona Thompson and Féilim James;  A Beauty that will Pass; Constance and Her Friends – selected by President Michael D. Higgins for performance at Áras an Uachtaráin for Culture Night 2016;  In One Breath from the award-winning Testimonies(co-written with Paul Kennedy); and Shadow of My Soul, May Our Faces Haunt You and Silent Screams. 

Mary’s film work includes the hour-long documentary Stories from the Shadows, the short film Tell Them Our Names, inspired by women’s stories of WWII and selected for the London Eye International Film Festival and Kerry Film Festival, the creative documentary Women in an Equal Europe and the short films Courageous Women and Grace and Joe inspired by powerful women’s stories from the 1916 to 1923 decade of commemorations period in Irish history. 

Olive Moore took up the role of Interim Director of Front Line Defenders in January 2023, after serving as Deputy Director since September 2020.

Olive’s passion for human rights and social justice began when she became a member Amnesty International at the age of sixteen. Her activism and interest in global politics and international relations led her to undertaking a Degree in Politics and Social Policy in UCD, and then a European Masters in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice, Italy.

Olive’s experience at the beginning of her career with Trocaire, of living in Kenya and working in South Sudan and Somalia, and the Human Rights Defenders she met during this time, formed her lasting appreciation of, and deep respect for, the work of HRDs.

Olive has held a number of roles in Trocaire, including Human Rights Officer, Policy Officer, Governance and Human Rights Coordinator, and Head of Programmes for the last four and a half years. Previously, she also interned in the Human Rights Unit of the European Commission, worked for the Irish Government at the UN Commission on Human Rights, and spent two years working at the World Bank as Head of Knowledge and Learning at the GPSA (Global Partnership for Social Accountability) in Washington DC.

Jessica Traynor is a poet, essayist, librettist, and poetry editor at Banshee. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2018) was an Irish Times book of the year. Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was an Irish Times book of the year, and a Guardian Best Summer Read of 2022. It was shortlisted for the Yeats Society Sligo/ Irish Independent Poetry Prize.

She is 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. Other awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize, the Listowel Poetry Prize, and Hennessy New Writer of the Year.  She is a Creative Fellow of UCD, and 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in Galway University. She is a judge for the 2023 Forward Prizes and a poetry critic for The Irish Times.

As a dramaturg, Jessica has worked as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre. She now offers dramaturgical support on a project by project basis. 

MayKay is a singer, songwriter, TV presenter and voiceover artist.

As lead singer of Fight Like Apes – named by The Irish Times as one of the best Irish musical acts of their generation – MayKay toured the world with The Prodigy and supported the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “Almost going into Debbie Harry territory,” she has wowed crowds at festivals across Europe and the US including South by Southwest and Glastonbury. Fight Like Apes returned this year and are playing numerous sold out shows.

MayKay has collaborated with musicians Duke Special, Jerry Fish and award-winning Irish electronic quintet, Le Galaxie, who she joined as front woman in 2017, ahead of the worldwide release of their third album. She has co written on albums with Le Galaxie, Elaine Mai, DJ Kormac and many other acclaimed artists.

Since 2015, MayKay has presented Ireland’s leading live music series Other Voices – along with BBC presenters Annie Mac and Huw Stephens – and interviewed artists including Little Simz, David Gray and Snow Patrol. She regularly MCs and moderates events including the SXSW send-off show hosted by the US Embassy in Dublin and the Matt Talbot Centre fundraiser in Vicar Street.

MayKay played the lead character in an animation aired in 2021. She spent lockdown collaborating on several different musical projects, including her first solo album, due to be released in 2023. She will debut her tracks at Ireland Music Week this October.

In the past 2 years she has made 2 trips as part of truck convoys to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and has just returned from her 2nd volunteer trip to Aida Camp in the occupied West Bank in Palestine, where she will return on an annual basis to volunteer in the Lajee Centre.

Lynn Ruane is an independent Irish politician, who has served as an Senator and deputy leader of the Civil Engagement Group in Seanad Éireann since 2016. Lynn is from Tallaght; an historically underserved and neglected community in Dublin. A long-time community and drugs worker, Lynn now champions the causes most close to her heart and community in Ireland’s parliament. 

An ardent legislator, Lynn tables progressive bills which respond to the lived experiences of those on the margins of society. To date, that has included pursuing harm reduction in drug policy, meaningful rehabilitation in criminal justice, a fairer child maintenance system for lone-parents, and the cessation of the misuse of non-disclosure agreements. Lynn also regularly seeks to amend Government legislation, to ensure it reflects the principles of human rights, social justice, equality, inclusion, and the empowerment of the marginalised. In addition to legislative work, Lynn is a member of three parliamentary Committees: Justice, Assisted Dying, and Children, Equality, Disability Integration and Youth.

Outside of her work in the Oireachtas, Lynn is a mother to two daughters, a published author and writer, a frequent contributor in print and online media, the creator and host of the award winning podcast ‘Conversations on the Margins, and, most recently, the co-presenter of the RTÉ documentary ‘Lady Gregory – Ireland’s First Social Influencer’ with the esteemed Miriam Margolyes OBE.

Michael Mc Cabe, Director, Facilitator, Actor, Performer

Michael McCabe is a performer, theatre director, movement choreographer, facilitator and arts therapist. He is a graduate of the prestigious Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq, Paris, France, and The Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin, Ireland.

His theatre appearances include The Drowning Room (Project Arts Centre), Borstal Boy, The Risen People (The Gaiety Theatre), A Christmas Carol, The Ginger Ale Boy (Corcadorca Theatre Company), Lives Worth Living (Graffiti Theatre Company), Good Evening Mr Joyce (Samuel Beckett Centre), Diarmuid agus Grainne, An Bradan Feasa, The Libertine, New World Order (Iomha Illdanach Theatre Company), Promises, Promises  (Project Arts Centre), A Day With Daghdha (Daghdha Dance Company), Macbeth, Six Characters in Search for an Author, St. Joan, Ariel (all at the Abbey Theatre), Wheel, Jeckyll and Hyde (Dublin and Prague Fringe Festivals), Resist /Surrender (Dublin Dance Festival), and Where The Shoe Pinches (The Pavilion Theatre). He was clown co-ordinator for 35 clowns and appeared in Barabbas Theatre Company’s production, City of Clowns, at the Dunamaise, Junction and Eargail Arts Festivals, and The Complex, Smithfield and appeared in Pagliacci at The Everyman Place Theatre, as part of Cork Midsummer Festival.

His television and film appearances include Aristocrats (BBC), Ireland:1848, (RTE), Window (IFI), All God’s Children (RTE/IFI), Nationwide (RTE). In 2021, Michael will appear in Bean Sidhe, Sweetcake, and Sodium Party, a new feature film directed by Michael McCudden.

Directing credits include: The Dead Woman’s Son (Smock Alley Theatre), A Wonderful Life, Peter Pan’s Cirque D’Imaginaire (TU Dublin Theatre), Showcases 2017-2019 (The New Theatre) and in 2020, The Grimm Tales (Smock Alley Theatre). Recent appearances include Footfalls, The Journey Home, and in Mermaid Arts Centre for Culture night on a work-in-progress, His Left, Her Right, supported by Mermaid and Wicklow Arts Office. 

Michael has an M.A. (Honours) in Dramatherapy from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, an M.A. in Modern Drama Studies from University College Dublin, and a B.A. (Honours) in Communication Studies from Dublin City University. He has directed theatre work in the HSE, the Dyspraxia Association of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, St. Michael’s house, and with other special needs organisations and schools with a focus on developing the potential of theatre for working with diverse groups. 

Michael has been working as a Movement Director, teaching extensive movement classes for actors at the Conservatory of Music and Drama, TU Dublin, the National Association of Youth Drama, Ringsend Institute, the Department of Performing Arts, Bray Institute of Further Education, and The Gaiety School of Acting (full time course).                                                                                                                               

Michael is a resident artist with Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and works with Smashing Times as a performer, director and arts facilitator on a range of projects from Acting for the Future to Legends of the Great Birth to State of the Art.  His theatre company, Ruaille Buaille, is building a physical theatre ensemble style based on the techniques of Jacques Lecoq, Anne Bogart, and Arianne Mouchkine. Michael was movement director on The Merchant of Venice, at Mermaid Arts Centre, and on the world premiere of Guerilla Days in Ireland in The Olympia Theatre, Dublin 

Michael is a graduate of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, (M.A. Dramatherapy, 2.1 Honours), and was awarded a scholarship to train with internationally renowned theatre director Anne Bogart in New York. Bursary awards include South Dublin County Council, Irish Actors Equity, and The Arts Council. Michael recently completed training in Suzuki and Viewpoints Techniques under Tadashi Suzuki of SCOT Theatre Company, in Toga Mura, Japan.