Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett, Gare St Lazare Ireland
Gare St Lazare Players Ireland is an Irish theatre company with a repertory of 17 Beckett titles, as well as a solo adaptation of Moby Dick and new plays by Michael Harding and Will Eno. Gare St Lazare Ireland are currently Artists in Residence at Everyman supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, Cork City Council Arts Office and UCC. As part of their residency Gare St Lazare are offering mentorships to four Cork-based professional artists. These mentorships will focus on both the creative and production ends of theatre-making and touring.
I am delighted to have been awarded one of these mentorships and am very pleased to have the opportunity to work with and learn from Gare St Lazare Ireland over the course of 2016 - 2017. They are a theatre company I have long admired. Many thanks to the Everyman Theatre, the Arts Council of Ireland, Cork City Council Arts Office and UCC.
“She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.”
Gary Lydon (Estragon) and Conor Lovett (Vladimir) in the Gare St Lazare Players Ireland production of Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett
Gare St Lazare Players Ireland is Ireland's most travelled theatre company and has a reputation for artistic excellence. The collaborative output of joint artistic directors Judy Hegarty Lovett (director) and Conor Lovett (actor) has earned an international reputation for entirely accessible and faithful renditions of Beckett's prose. The company have represented Irish culture in more venues worldwide than any other Irish theatre company. In all they have performed at over 60 venues in Ireland and at a further 80 worldwide on six continents.
The company's repertory includes 2013's Waiting For Godot and Here All Night and the solo performances, Title and Deed by Will Eno, Moby Dick adapted by Lovett/Hegarty Lovett, The Good Thief by Conor McPherson, Swallow by Michael Harding and over 18 Samuel Beckett titles including the prose pieces: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Lessness, Worstward Ho, Texts for Nothing, Enough, First Love, The End & The Calmative and the plays Waiting For Godot, Rockaby, A Piece of Monologue and all seven of Beckett's radio plays.
In 2006 the company produced new versions of Beckett's 7 radio plays in association with RTE (Ireland's state broadcaster) for The Beckett Centenary Festival. In 2009 Lovett and Hegarty Lovett adapted Moby Dick as a solo performance which toured to 28 theatres in Ireland and has also accepted invitations to National Theatre of Bulgaria, California International Theatre Festival, Rubicon Theatre (Ventura), New Haven International Festival of Art & Ideas and London Literature Festival at The South Bank Centre.
In 2014 the company toured Title and Deed to Edinburgh Festival (winning The Stage Award for Acting Excellence), and First Love to The Arcola Theatre London (Nominated for Best Direction and Best Male Performance in the Off West End Awards) and Waiting For Godot toured to Shanghai, China (Shanghai International Drama Festival Award). In 2015 Title and Deed toured to London and Waiting For Godot toured to New York along with The End and Here All Night.