Roscommon Arts Centre is delighted to announce it’s Creative Ireland “Wings” Resident for 2021 as theatre practitioner Veronica Dyas.
Veronica Dyas is an artist working through theatre, new text & installation. Facilitation, Action & LOVE are crucial to her practice. She works regularly with communities of identity, purpose and/or place. In 2020, she was Artist in Residence at Belltable Limerick writing her new stage play Paddy McGrath’s Daughter. My Son My Son (2018), her play interrogating class, gender(s) and education inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s play The Mother was staged at Project, Mermaid and Axis Ballymun. She made HERE & NOW (2012-2018) exploring housing, homelessness, and the practice of walking in response to the economic crash presenting in stages: HERE & NOW (i live here now) THISISPOPBABY with St. Patrick’s Festival Where We Live Festival (2018), Extracts of the HERE & NOW (2015) SCIENCE GALLERY DUBLIN HOME/SICK Exhibition, Project Arts Centre (2014), and Sorcha Kenny’s Walking We Ask Questions (DFF 2012). Her solo performance In My Bed (DFF 2011) marked a shift in her practice toward embodied autobiographical work. Veronica holds a B.A. (Hons.) in Drama & Theatre Studies with Sociology from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A. in Text & Performance Studies from RADA & King’s College London. She is an alumni of Irish Theatre Institute’s Six in the Attic Programme and Dublin Youth Theatre.
Veronica will spend her two month residency working on her new text for performance APOSTASY, originally developed through the Pan Pan International Mentorship Programme 2019 with Johanna Freiburg of She She Pop as mentor. APOSTASY interrogates a history underwritten and under prioritised in how we are led to understand ourselves, as citizens, as active agents, as women. Resonating with Roscommon and its heritage, Strokestown House and the Famine Museum, together with Cruachan near Tulsk are the primary inspirations for this work. Mentored by Eleanor Methven, this residency will allow Veronica to spend further time on site, in Strokestown House, exploring the Famine Museum and walking in the vicinity of Cruachan, and the physical studio space at Roscommon Arts Centre will facilitate Veronica’s practice by enabling her to write this play.
