Rob has enjoyed both national and international tours over the past 19 years of his acting career. He has most recently performed Tales from an Afterworld (WB Yeats), written by Féilim James and directed by Geraldine McAlinden in Áras an Uachtaráin for President Michael D Higgins. Some of his favourite theatre productions include The Shadow of a Gunman (The New Theatre, directed by Ronan Wilmot), Pinter x 4 (Pearse Centre, directed by Peter Reid), Scabs (Theatre Upstairs directed by Liam Halligan) In Arabia We’d all be Kings (Beckett Theatre, directed by Liam Hallihan), Mary Stuart (The Grand Lodge, Liam Halligan) and La Locandiera (Edinburgh Fringe festival, directed Alice Coghlan). His screen work includes ‘A date for Mad Mary’, ‘Vaudevillians’, ‘The Comeback’, ‘Twitchy’, ‘The saviour of Dublin City’, ‘Ctrl’, ‘The Guarantee’, ‘The Enchanted Island’, ‘Two Margaritas and one Daiquiri’ amongst other independent films. Rob is also a seasoned theatre and screen workshop facilitator.

Classical musician Emma Byrne is an active performer across Ireland and abroad. She is an enthusiastic young violinist with a passion for the arts. She has performed at venues such the National Concert Hall, the RDS, the Helix Theatre and the Whale Theatre. Having studied at the Young European Strings School of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, she now divides her time between teaching, orchestral playing, chamber music and solo performances.

Lorna is an actor and dancer from Co. Wicklow. Graduating from The Lir Academy last year she has since been in shows for the Scene + Heard Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival. She most recently finished on a new play ‘Yesteryear’ which ran for a week in Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford.

Theatre Credits include: To Let (Dublin Theatre Festival), Moving On (Scene + Heard), Yesteryear (Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford).

Film/TV Credits include: Five Letters to the stranger who will Dissect my brain (Short), Love in the Time of Corona (Short), The Hunted (Series, Channel 5). 

Féilim James is an award-winning writer from Dublin, Ireland. In 2020, the Arts of Council of Ireland awarded Féilim a Literature Bursary Award to finish his debut novel, Flower of Ash, as well as a Professional Development Award. He received an Arts Bursary from Dublin City Arts Office in 2021 to finish his first poetry collection, I was a river, lost. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including The Fiction Pool, The Galway Review, and Icarus. His work through Irish, under Féilim Ó Brádaigh, has won seven Oireachtas na Gaeilge literary awards. His short fiction and poetry, through English and Irish, have appeared in a number of journals, including The Fiction Pool, The Galway Review, Icarus, and Comhar. A short film Féilim wrote, titled The Big No, produced by Smashing Times, was shortlisted by the IndieX Film Festival, and his play At Summer’s End has toured Ireland.

In The Big No, a young man tells the story of his psychological unravelling and subsequent mental health crisis. Told in the form of a voiceover monologue accompanied by compelling imagery, this poetic short film takes us on a journey of despair, introspection, and hope. As he battles against panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, he is forced to face the ‘why’ of his problems head on, learning some essential truths about himself and the world.

Féilim’s play At Summer’s End has been on tour with Smashing Times as part of The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII.  At Summer’s End is based on the life-story of Ettie Steinberg, an Irish woman who was murdered, along with her family, at Auschwitz.

Féilim’s themes are wide-ranging, and include identity, mental illness, guilt, human animalism, death, and humankind’s relationship with nature. He is committed to maintaining an ever evolving and progressive approach to his work, with each book both building on the last and differing in a vital way. In other words, the aforementioned themes will change as time passes, as will their stylistic rendering. ‘My inspirations are many and wide-ranging. To the fore are James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, John Banville, Marilynne Robinson, Ted Hughes, TS Eliot, Seán Ó Ríordáin, and Radiohead’.

Geraldine is an actor, director, producer and writer originally from Armagh in Northern Ireland. She started training in acting in the Gaiety School of Acting in 2000 and later in Stanislavski at the Focus Theatre in Dublin. In 2012/13 Geraldine completed the full time Screen Acting Programme at The Factory (now Bow Street Academy) in Dublin where she trained with Lance Daly, Kirsten Sheridan, Shimmy Marcus, Jim Sheridan, Aisling Walsh, Derbhla Walsh, Frank Berry and Ian Power, among others.

Her film acting credits include Ordinary Love, Black 47, The Secret Scripture, Dark Lies the Island, Procession, and Portrait of a Zombie. Geraldine’s performance in Portrait of a Zombie led to her being long listed for an IFTA for Best Actress in a leading role in a feature film in 2013. Geraldine’s TV Credits include Miss Scarlet and the Duke, Blood, Striking Out and Red Rock. Her stage performances include The 24 Hour Plays Dublin 2020 (Abbey Theatre), One Day by Dick Walsh as well as Dublin Fringe theatre shows A Remember to Breathe and Spoonfed (a long play improvisation), Philadelphia, Here I come! and Beyond Therapy!

Geraldine trained in directing with Kristian Marken and she subsequently became an associate director with The Focus theatre. Her stage directing credits include Play/Record – The Granby Transcripts, (Players Theatre, Trinity), My Name is Mary (Project Theatre), The Cripple of Inishmaan, (Smock Alley) The New York Monologues (The International Bar, Smock Alley, The Electric Picnic, the Bulmer’s Comedy Festival and The Focus Theatre), One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (The Factory), Orphans (The New Theatre).  Film directing credits include the short films Helmets and Thorny Ireland.

Geraldine has trained in writing with Stephen Walsh (Filmbase) and Pat McCabe (The Factory) among others. Her tiny play Knowing was published and produced by Fishamble’s Tiny Plays for Ireland. She has also written several short films.

Geraldine is one of two founding members of Alchemy 8 Productions which produces theatre and film with a particular focus on stories of the human heart in conflict with itself. Its theatre production Orphans by Lyle Kessler which Geraldine also directed was included in a round-up of best theatre performances in Ireland in 2015.

Geraldine is fascinated by investigating themes of the human need for connection and community, the importance of sense of place and roots and the presumptions and prejudices these can bring. This is reflected in much of her work involving large ensemble casts, with a focus on developing well rounded, interesting characters and their physical and emotional juxtaposition in relation to each other.

She is passionate about the arts’ ability to positively impact audiences in many far-reaching ways from providing much needed entertainment and escapism, to being a salve for the soul, a cathartic release and a means of encouraging and developing empathy. Geraldine believes in the power of humour to provoke an emotional shift. As a solicitor in her previous life, Geraldine is passionate about justice and promoting Human Rights on an individual and collective basis.