Hi there!
If you’re here, you’re looking at my hiring page! Welcome!
You’ll find my resume attached in a link below, and if you scroll down this page you’ll find work samples as part of my digital portfolio.
For a complete sense of my work across direction, education and publication, please feel free to explore my website more fully.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to reach out to me through the “contact” page.
Thank you for your time,
Colm
Colm photographed in the RTÉ Guide, while working on his production of Charles Macklin’s Love á la Mode at Smock Alley Theatre.
RESUME|2024
Please find my current resume here. References available upon request.
PORTFOLIO |2012-2022
“Titus’ Study” from my site-specific production of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Pictured: Ned Massey as Titus.
In the following digital portfolio, you will find an introduction to the look, feel and focus of my work as a director for stage and film, my work as a generative artist, as well as my academic publications and insights from my process.
Simply scroll down; thank you for your time, and enjoy!
It is not intended as a substitute for my production galleries, archived elsewhere on this website, but instead to give you an immediate sense of my work.
Work samples include: sizzle reels from recent productions, my non-narrative short film, a highlights reel of processes and early productions (2015 - 2020), an interactive gallery with selected production photos from the last decade of my work, short abstracts from my writing, and my multidsciplinary work across performance, photography and poetry.
For the best experience of video and music content in this portfolio, please use headphones.
ON STAGE
I have been in the habit of making storyboards for my productions for about ten years, and probably long before there was ever a production to design! Here’s one for God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz, which I produced in Dublin in 2015.
WORK SAMPLE 1:
STAGE DIRECTION (CONTEMPORARY):
MUD & SPRINGTIME by MARIA IRÉNE FORNES
The work sample below is intended to give you a sense of how I work on contemporary plays. Click the image below to launch the video. Mud & Springtime was an evening of two short plays, presented in repertory. The cast was Mazvita Chanakira, Delano Montgomery, Kate Vozella and Mike Gerbi.
Del Montgomery, Mike Gerbi and Mazvita Chanakira in “Mud.”
SELECTED PRODUCTION PHOTOS
These selected production photos are presented together as a moodboard, to give you a sense of my communication style, design preferences and sense of staging.
Featured productions include: Uncle Vanya, Springtime, Gays! Against the Free State, Enemy of the Stars, The David Fragments, Mud, and Love á la Mode.
To further explore these productions and to access full designer credits, check out the “Productions” section of this website.
WORK SAMPLE 2:
STAGE DIRECTION (CLASSICAL)
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Presented by
THE CLASSICAL THEATRE OF HARLEM
This work sample shows my approach to classical texts. Click the image below to launch the video. Midsummer was presented by Classical Theatre of Harlem, and features their Young Company (graduate actors grappling with Shakespeare for the first time). It is the first draft of ongoing work on my Midsummer, a dark, haunted fairytale.
Isaiah Dodo-Williams as Bottom.
ON FILM
Colm behind the camera on The Feath3r Theory’s Kill One Race at Playwright’s Horizons, New York City, where he was Assistant Director to Raja Feather Kelly.
WORK SAMPLE 2: FILM DIRECTING (SHORT/NON-NARRATIVE & DANCE)
WE MET ON A DANCE FLOOR by INUA ELLAMS
In 2022, I was given the opportunity to make my first film by The Abbey, The National Theatre of Ireland. The short was conceived as part of a series of shorts based on the same piece of text by Inua Ellams. This excercise in creative interpretation brought together diverse directorial voices, and presented them as part of an anthology titled Reel Mix. In my interpretation, I focussed on the rapid gentrification of Dublin, male intimacy, and dance on film.
Clinton Liberty as Speaker, Sean Doyle as Man
Generative artist
A short featurette which contextualizes Colm’s work on “The Buckel Project,” or “When David Buckel Saved the World.”
WORK SAMPLE 3:
THEATRE-MAKING
“THE BUCKEL PROJECT”
Beyond my work as a director, I often work independently as a theatre-maker. I create research-driven, genre-bending performances at scale, not beholden to form or style, which attempt to put the contemporary and the immediate future in conversation, by asking “where to now?” These are “plays,” but they are also intended as live documentaries, non-fiction adventures, and artist-led grassroots organizations.
“The Buckel Project,” an intimate exploration of the life and death of climate activist and LGBTQ+ rights attorney David Buckel, exemplifies that practice.
The pillars of my work, theatrical direction, dramatic writing and filmmaking are extensions of the impulse to be in conversation with the catastrophe in front of us - an urgent requirement if we are to combat climate complacency.
In an uncertain time, I am certain of one thing: artists are required, more than ever, to build new visions for future communities. For a taste of what that work looks like, here’s me discussing it at the Pan Pan International Symposium in 2022.
in writing
WORK SAMPLE 4:
ACADEMIC PUBLICATION
“CHARLES MACKLIN AND THE THEATRES OF LONDON: “Love a la Mode in Performance”
(Liverpool University Press, 2022)
Colm’s recent publication in Liverpool University Press, 2022.