Through our new Gateways Bursary the Watergate aims to support Kilkenny based artists and invest in new work as well as expanding our community of artists.
At Watergate we believe in the collective power of artists and the arts sector to strengthen communities. Through the Gateways Bursary we aim to connect with artists in the early stages of their careers and/or with established artists with the seed of a new idea. We see this as an investment in our community and an important connection to the development of new work across all artistic disciplines.
Meet the Watergate Gateways Bursary Recipients 2025.
John is a writer, actor and director.
Stage productions include Denouement (Lyric Theatre), Taboo (White Label), War Of Attrition, Scratcher, Smitten, Heart Shaped Vinyl (Devious Theatre) as well as the Irish historical plays The Roaring Banshees and The Hellfire Squad, co-written with Peter McGann. He also wrote the stage adaptation of Thomas Kilroy’s novel The Big Chapel (Asylum/Abbey Theatre/Kilkenny Arts Festival) which was nominated for Best Production at the Irish Theatre Awards.
Other work includes the community theatre projects Home Theatre Ireland (Dublin Theatre Festival) and Bridge Street Will Be (Equinox/Asylum).Screen work includes the TV series Dead Still for which he won an Edgar Award and was nominated for an IFTA. Short films include Seanie & Flo (Deadpan Pictures), Kathleen (Paradox Pictures), Two Cats, Smitten, Daffney Molloy and Other Catastrophes (Mycrofilms).Work for radio includes Tenterhooks (Near FM), The First Puck (CRKC FM/GAA McNamee Award Winner), the IMRO award winning radio plays 100 Everyday Menaces (RTÉ Drama On One) and The War Of The Worlds (co-adapted with Kevin Mooney) as well as the detective serial Vultures (KCLR96FM).
John is a founding member of the theatre collectives Devious Theatre (Kilkenny) and White Label (Dublin). Stage productions include Denouement (Lyric Theatre), Taboo (White Label), War of Attrition and Scratcher, He also wrote the stage adaptation of Thomas Kilroy’s novel The Big Chapel (Asylum/Abbey Theatre/Kilkenny Arts Festival) which was nominated for Best Production at the Irish Theatre Awards.
Gillian has just completed the script for her new stage play, Gúna, a play about the significant dresses in the lives of two sisters as they tidy up their mother’s bedroom and each dress transports them back to significant events in their lives. Her stage work includes Hooked (Verdant Productions, Inis Nua Theatre in Philadelphia, Irish Theatre of Florida), Fish Out of Water (Irish Classical Theatre, Buffalo), and Lost Weekend (Axis, Ballymun).
Gillian has written three historical plays for the Decade of Centenaries: Coolbawn Women, The Burning of Woodstock, and The Countess. All were broadcast on KCLR, supported by Decade of Centenaries funding.
Her radio drama Mr. Sun aired on RTÉ in 2019 , winning a Silver Award at the New York Radio Awards. It was later broadcast on KCLR and then adapted for short film with Emagine Waterford. Her second short film, Baby’s Last Ride, is currently doing the short film festival circuit. In the summer, her short screenplay “Debs Night” will be filmed in Waterford.
Gillian is a drama and film tutor with numerous organisations, such as the Acquired Brain Injury Group Kilkenny, SOS, Kite, Amárach Nua, Waterford Healing Arts Trust and Mother of Fair Love School,KIlkenny and has her own drama school in Thomastown; TADA Theatre and Film School.Her work has earned several awards, including three Arts Council of Ireland's Project Award, Agility Awards, Artlinks Bursaries, Peggy Ramsey Theatre Bursary and Katherine Cornell Theatre Ward (Buffalo New York) and the Tyrone Guthrie Bursary.
Joe Murphy is an experienced producer and writer with a track record of developing dynamic theatre projects, festivals, and new work initiatives. As Festival Producer for the 2025 Scene + Heard Festival of New Work at Smock Alley Theatre, Joe plays a key role in supporting emerging voices in Irish theatre. He has also worked as Festival Coordinator for Dublin City Council’s Bram Stoker Festival (2023-2025) and as Production Manager & Producer for Ping Pong Disco at All Together Now Festival, bringing large-scale, immersive experiences to life.
In 2024, Joe produced First Light at Carlow Arts Festival, a site-specific theatrical collaboration between Asylum Productions and Once Off Productions, directed by Janice de Broithe and Donal Gallagher.
Joe has produced work at major festivals and venues, including Edinburgh Fringe (Underbelly, Summerhall), Dublin Fringe Festival (Project Arts Centre, Bewley’s Theatre, Civic Theatre), and Carlow Arts Festival. His producing credits include the award-winning production Frigid (dir. Hildegard Ryan), Chicken, and Asylum/Once Off Productions' First Light.
As a writer, Joe's work includes Wide Open (Dublin Fringe Festival 2024, Scene + Heard Festival 2024), Alright Sisters (Watergate Theatre 24 Hour Plays), and spoken word performances at All Together Now Festival .
Susie is an actor, writer, singer and performance facilitator based in Kilkenny and Dublin. She has acted in Theatres all over Ireland in conventional and unconventional spaces in both English and Irish. Recent acting credits include Sanctuary, A Witches Tale from AMC TV (2024); The Local, The Big Chapel (Asylum); The M House,
National Tour and Dublin Theatre Festival (Equinox); Holy Father Little Ghost, BAI/KCLR and
playWildParty (Watergate Theatre/Asylum Productions), both by Jeffrey Gormly. She has acted in Gillian Grattan's Decade of Centenary Radio Dramas as well as Hooked, Gúna and many others of Gillian's plays.
She is an experienced bi-lingual Voiceover artist: Daphne, Scooby Doo (Warner Brothers); multiple shows on TG4; Cartoon Saloon's recently released Eriú.
Susie’s one woman performances, which she writes and produces, include The Waiting, scheduled to be performed in The Project Cube in 2026, and Horae performed in Complex Theatre, Carlow Visual and Nest Festival, Kilkenny. Songlines, written with longterm collaborator Jeffrey Gormly
and performed with Kate Powell was presented in a work-in-progress stage for culture Night 2024.
Susie tailors her creative response to the needs of each performance context working with a diverse range of people, timelines, organisations and funding structures, to support both her own work and the development of the theatre eco-system in the SouthEast. In 2014 she co-created and co-produced NEST festival with Niamh Moroney to create space and dialogue for female-led work. In 2016 she co-created and produced HATCH in Visual Carlow which was a networking and performance platform for South East Based Artists.
She is also a performance facilitator and choreographer, including at KCAT, Kilkenny where she pioneered a one year inclusive dance training, the first of it's kind in Ireland. She has lectured in SETU Waterford and Carlow Institute of Further Education.
Anna Ní Dhúill is a cross-disciplinary artist from Kilkenny. Anna’s practice encompasses writing, directing and producing theatre and film projects that explore universal feeling, with a distinct focus on queer identity and expressionism.
Some of Anna’s career highlights include devising a feminist performance in New York in 2019, being selected for the BBC Writersroom Voices Programme in 2023, and adapting my play into a film script for Screen Ireland in 2024. Since 2023, Anna has been dedicated to shining a light on the creatives based in the south-east through the running of Cult Collective, an artist collective based in Kilkenny.