Fishamble has so far run five annual mentoring schemes for playwrights and directors.
These initiatives has been run in partnership with Kildare County Council/Riverbank Arts Centre, Fingal County Council/Draíocht, DLR/The Mill, the Pavilion and the Source Arts Centre, and have proven to be highly successful.
Fishamble’s sixth annual mentoring scheme with Belltable in Limerick culminated in an informal presentation of work-in-progress in May 2017. In 2018 Fishamble partnered with The Source, Tenderfoot at The Civic Theatre, Hawk’s Well Theatre and the Belltable.
Workshops
Tenderfoot and Tenderwrite at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght
Fishamble supports Tenderfoot, an award-winning theatre programme at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght for transition year students in the South Dublin County Council region. Its aim is to provide interested students with an opportunity to learn about theatre in a hands on way. Under the guidance of Veronica Coburn, Davey Kelleher and Fishamble’s Gavin Kostick students participate in a targeted programme designed to introduce them to the basic conventions of drama, the work of existing playwrights and the discipline of writing for the stage. The ultimate aim of this programme is for each student to write an original play for the stage.
Fishamble regularly runs professional playwriting artists from particular communities
Previous workshops include working with writers with disability along with Arts and Disability Ireland and playwright Kaite O’Reilly, writers from Black, ethnic minority and immigrant communities working along with Felicia Olusanya (Felispeaks). The most recent workshop in this series was ‘Cruising the Boards’.
Cruising the Boards
Cruising the Boards was a workshop series for queer theatremakers and writers based in Ireland led by Carys D. Coburn & Gavin Kostick in Spring 2025.
This was a workshop series for artists and writers who wanted to work on in dialogue with other artists, and discuss the distinctive problems of staging that come with queer aesthetics and queer politics. When does camp tip over into orientalism? Where’s the line between trying to write parts queer performers will love to play and pandering? (Is pandering only bad when corporations do it?) How do you write about the state of trans healthcare globally without A.) going on for 13 hours or B.) making yourself too depressed to perform the show that results? If your play is a fragmentary exercise in the queer art of failure, how do you make it clear to the audience you’ve read Halberstam and haven’t just written a bad play? Was Sarah Schulman right about Angels? Wasn’t Russell Tovey great in Angels?
Carys D. Coburn
Carys D. Coburn was the winner of the Verity Bargate Award 2017 for Citysong – co-produced by Soho Theatre, the Abbey Theatre, and Galway International Arts Festival.
Other plays include Absent The Wrong (Best Production at Dublin Fringe 2022) and HOTHOUSE (Best Production at Dublin Fringe 2023).
One of the founders of MALAPROP, their work together won acclaim for its distinctive blend of nerdiness and tenderness.
Short work includes Me, Sara for the Abbey’s Priming the Canon, ALASIALIAS for Paines Plough’s Come To Where I’m From, and Our Mother, My Daughters for Draíocht Blanchardstown’s HOME Theatre.
Work with young people is a major strand of their practice; they are the author of ‘Ask Too Much of Me’ for the NYT ensemble (Peacock Theatre 2019); this is a room…, for Dublin Youth Theatre (Dublin Theatre Festival 2017); and ran the inaugural ARTICULATE programme for young writers for Youth Theatre Ireland 2020-2023.
They are the librettist, with Annemarie NíChuirreáin, of Michael Gallen’s opera Elsewhere, which premiered on the Abbey Stage in 2021, and the sole librettist of Horse Ape Bird, an INO and Music Generation cocommission, by David Coonan.
They contributed text to THISISPOPBABY’s WAKE.
They were the facilitator of the inaugural WEFT Studio Group, a peer mentorship and support network for Black artists and artists of colour more broadly.
Gavin Kostick
Gavin Kostick is a playwright, literary manager and independent dramaturg.
His works have been produced nationally and internationally. Favourite works for Fishamble include The Ash Fire, The Flesh Addict, The End of The Road and Invitation to a Journey (with CoisCeim and Crash Ensemble). The Leap is Gavin’s first play for children.
Further works include This is What We Sang for Kabosh, Fight Night, The Games People Play and At the Ford for Rise Productions and Gym Swim Party with Danielle Galligan in co-production with the O’Reilly Theatre. He wrote the libretto for the opera The Alma Fetish composed by Raymond Deane, performed at the National Concert Hall. As a performer he performed Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: Complete, a six hour show for Absolut Fringe, Dublin Theatre Festival and the London Festival of Literature at the Southbank.
Gavin is currently the literary manager of Fishamble: The New Play Company, a tutor in playwriting and dramaturgy in both The Lir Academy and Trinity College Dublin as well as being a core mentor on the Tenderfoot Transition Year programme for young writers at the Civic Theatre.
Particular favourite projects that Gavin has initiated and delivered with Fishamble include Show in a Bag (with Dublin Fringe and The Irish Theatre Institute), The New Play Clinic, The Dublin Fringe New Writing Award, Tiny Plays for Ireland and A Play for Ireland.
Both for Fishamble, and as an independent dramaturg, Gavin’s projects and works he has supported have gained significant national and international award recognition including amongst others Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards, BBC Stewart Parker Trust, Zebbie Awards, Dublin Fringe Awards, Business to Arts, Olivier, Scotsman Fringe First, Herald Angel and Archangel and New York Critics’ Pick.
His own plays have also received similar national and international award recognition. Gavin has recently completed a new version of The Odyssey, supported by Kilkenny Arts Festival, ClassicsNow.