Deborah Warner
Deborah Warner is one of the UK’s leading theatre and opera directors. Her work has been seen all over the world.
Her previous site-specific installations include The St Pancras Project and The Tower Project (London) and The Angel Project (Perth and New York). Her and Fiona Shaw’s hugely successful production of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land played in unusual and found spaces across the world. In London it was the first live theatre event to take place at Wilton’s Music Hall since the nineteenth century. Her boundary-pushing theatre work includes Mother Courage and Her Children, Richard II, Hedda Gabler, Electra and Happy Days. Deborah has worked with some of the world’s most prestigious Opera companies including the Royal Opera House, ENO, Glyndebourne and La Scala. She has won Olivier, Evening Standard and South Bank Show awards for Direction and Production.
Deborah was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1992, L’Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 2000 and was made a CBE in the 2006 Queen’s 80th Birthday Honours.
Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw is one of the Ireland’s best known actors. Her stage credits include: London Assurance, Mother Courage, Happy Days and Richard II at the National Theatre; Medea in the West End and on Broadway; Electra at the Barbican; Hedda Gabler; and Readings, a poetry show in Paris. Fiona Shaw has received many Olivier and Evening Standard awards for Best Actress including for Machinal at the National Theatre and As You Like It at the Old Vic.
She has appeared on BBC television and radio discussing and performing the poetry of Donne, Beckett and Yeats. Her performance of T.S. Eliot’s 434-line poem The Waste Land, directed by her regular collaborator Deborah Warner, toured the world.
Her extensive film work includes the Harry Potter films, The Tree of Life, My Left Foot, The Butcher Boy, The Black Dahlia and Three Men and a Little Lady. Her television work includes the popular series True Blood.
Fiona has directed opera and theatre including The Marriage of Figaro, Elegy for Young Lovers, and Riders to the Sea, all for ENO.
She holds honorary doctorates from Trinity College Dublin and the National University of Ireland and was awarded a CBE in 2001.
Mel Mercier
Mel is a composer, performer and teacher. He is the Chair of Performing Arts at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, the director of the FUAIM Music at UCC event series and a co-founder of the Cork-based, intercultural music ensemble TRASNA. He is the Director of the UCC Javanese gamelan Nyai Sekar Madu Sari and the project leader on the Henebry/O’Neill wax cylinder digitisation project at UCC.
As a performer, Mel has collaborated with pianist and composer Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, with John Cage, and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (Roaratorio, Inlets, Duets). As a composer he works regularly with Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw. Mel’s installation work includes From the Sources (2010) at the Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, which featured simultaneous projections of film footage featuring performances by 100 Irish folk musicians of almost one thousand 17th and 18th century traditional tunes.
John Del’Nero
John began his career in sound in London’s West End working on productions such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Billy Liar and Jeeves. He designed the sound for the original Rocky Horror Show and has worked at The Royal Court Theatre, The Royal Exchange Manchester.
John has been Sound Designer for the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo for the past 20 years. After working on the Zoria Military Tattoo on Red Square, John was awarded the Kremlin Zoria Gold Plate. He has worked for Royal Families in the UK and abroad including Jordan and Saudi Arabia. His recent work has included working with Pimlico Opera in various prisons around the country with shows such as Les Miserables, West Side Story, and Some Like It Hot.
John previously worked with Artichoke on Hilary Westlake’s Dining with Alice and Crown of Light for Lumiere Durham in 2009, 2011 and 2013. In 2015 he worked on a new projection for the Cathedral, The World Machine. He is currently the sound consultant for Imagination whose major clients include BT, Canon, Rolls-Royce, Ford, and Lincoln. Currently, John is working on a project with Orlando Gough for Messums Wiltshire.
