Tishé Fatunbi is an actor, writer and theatre maker from Blanchardstown, Dublin. As an artist, her work focuses on telling immigrant stories on Irish stages.

Her first play, OLOLUFE, enjoyed a sold-out run at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2024 and has gone on to be selected as part of Screen Ireland’s Perspectives Programme to be developed into a feature-length screenplay.

She is a founding member of ArinolaTheatre, a company dedicated to creating artistic community and work for people of colour in Ireland. They are currently being mentored by Rough Magic as part of this year’s SEEDS Programme.

As an actor, she has worked with various companies such as Once Off Productions, THISISPOPBABY and Landmark Productions. She has been part of ITI’s Six in the Attic and Smock Alley Theatre’s Rachel Baptiste Programme for writers of colour.

Seán is an Irish/Martinican playwright and filmmaker whose work has been featured in The Irish Times, at Disney+ as well as the Dublin Theatre Festival.

He grew up in Clondalkin before moving to Glasgow to study Film and Television and English Literature at the University of Glasgow. He then moved to Berlin in 2014 where he worked on film sets and in physical theatre for a year before he began writing, directing and producing his own short films, music videos, documentaries and web-series.

In 2023, he won a place on the Rachel Baptiste Programme at Smock Alley Theatre where he developed his first major work for the stage, ”The Peace Keeper” which had a preview staging at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

Esosa Ighodaro is a Nigerian-Irish writer, director, and vocalist. She creates work for stage and screen, with a particular focus on playwriting that amplifies Black talent and tells nuanced, varied stories of Black life in Ireland.

She has collaborated with leading institutions including the Abbey Theatre, where she was
Resident Director in 2024, and is currently Artist in Residence at axis: Ballymun (2023–2026).
She is also an Associate Artist at Civic Theatre.

Her curatorial work includes programming Black History Month in partnership with Civic Theatre. Esosa is Programme Director of the Rachel Baptiste Programme at Smock Alley Theatre, supporting writers of colour through a paid, mentored script development process.

Her screen work has been shown at film festivals across Ireland, United States, and Southern
Africa. As a vocalist, Esosa works across a wide range of styles, earning particular acclaim for
her soulful interpretations of traditional Irish music — soul ceol.

Dafe Orugbo is an award-winning artist and board member of the Performing Arts Forum.

Last year, he was selected for the Abbey Theatre’s prestigious Box of Tricks program. His was one of the 10 scripts selected out of 250 applicants. That same script (Am I The A**hole?) premiered at  Dublin Fringe Festival in September 2025, supported by Fishamble, where it was met with a sold-out run in Smock Alley’s main space.

In Early 2025, Dafe premiered another production, Fin.-The Harbinger of Death, at the Scene+Heard festival. It was also a sold-out show that received an overwhelmingly positive response.

Additionally, Dafe has gained international recognition as part of the hip-hop duo Tebi Rex, with whom he has toured Ireland, the UK, and Europe. He is particularly interested in art that centres on the audience’s experience.

Gavin Kostick is a playwright, literary manager and independent dramaturg.
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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.
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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.
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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.

Nicola Murphy Dubey is an Irish Director/Actress and Writer. She is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts NY conservatory acting program and received her MFA in Directing from The Lir, National Academy of Dramatic Art, Trinity College Dublin. She is a Co-Founder and Artistic Director of On The Quays Productions, and Director of Audience and New Play Development at Irish Repertory Theatre.

Off-Broadway directing credits include: The Black Wolfe Tone (World Premiere), Irishtown (World Premiere), A Girl is a Half-formed thing (NY Times Critic’s Pick), Pumpgirl (NY Times Critic’s Pick) & Belfast Girls. Internationally: Stop/Over (World Premiere) RENT at Cas Di Cultura, Aruba’s National Theatre, which also performed a sold-out run at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe & the short films Reemergence: A Queer Visual Album & FLOAT (co-written & directed with Katy Wright-Mead).

Assistant Directing credits include Katie Roche at The Abbey Theatre, Dublin (Caroline Byrne), Silence is Requested at The Lir Academy (Louise Lowe), Trans-Euro Express at The Irish Arts Center (Christine Henry) & an assistantship placement with Neal Street Productions on the hit UK Show ‘Call The Midwife’ (BBC & PBS).​

Nicola co-wrote the short film FLOAT with Katy Wright-Mead, the online theatrical piece Still…Home for the Holidays with Matt Engle and was a co-creator on Reemergence: A Queer Visual Album. She was selected for the inaugural Scéal Nua (New Writing) program with Origin Theatre Co. at Irish Arts Center.

As an actress, she has worked with Irish Rep, On The Quays, Believe Digi, NBC Peacock, The Travel Channel, Fallen Angel Theatre Co & Primary Stages.

Kelley Nicole Girod is a playwright and producer currently residing in NYC where, for the past 16 years she has dedicated herself to the curation and development of work by Black playwrights as well as building community.  She is currently Director of New Work at the world famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, NYC, and founded the OBIE Award winning Black playwrights festival, The Fire This Time Festival, which is entering its 17th season  and has premiered and developed nearly 100 new plays by playwrights of the Black diaspora. Kelley was recently named a Top 30 Professional 2025 by Musical America.  In 2023, she was named the recipient of New York Innovative Theater’s prestigious Ellen Stewart Award in recognition of her contribution to the theater. In addition, Girod is Editor of The Fire This Time Festival’s first anthology of plays published with Bloomsbury UK/Methuen Drama titled “25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival, A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Rebirth and Black Theater.” She has also been a guest lecturer at Yale and Stanford University.

As a playwright, her work reflects the rich communities of her native Louisiana, and in particular, the often overlooked stories of the Black/Creole/Cajun experience that she was brought up in.  For nearly a decade Kelley has worked on a trilogy of plays highlighting this unique experience, weaving together stories inspired by her family to uplift languages, traditions, and ways of life currently under threat due to climate change. The plays in the trilogy consist of This Stretch of Montpelier, The Faith Healer, and A Body of Water.

She received her MFA in playwriting from Columbia University where she was a Stein and Liberace Fellow as well as a John Golden Fellow. She received her undergrad degree at LSU where she graduated with honors.