Kevin Gleeson

In Beckett’s one-act play we meet Krapp, a man in his late sixties. Every year, on his birthday, Krapp records a new tape – a review of the year just gone. But on this occasion – his 69th birthday – he listens back to a tape he recorded years before. 

Twelve years ago, Stephen Rea recorded the earlier tapes. He said: 

I had no certainty that one day I might play Krapp, but I thought it a good idea to pre-record the early tapes so that the voice quality would differ significantly from that of the older character, should the opportunity ever arise to use it.

These are the tapes that are used in the current production.

Krapp’s Last Tape was the first production in Landmark’s 20th anniversary year. It played a sell-out run at Project Arts Centre in Jan/Feb 2024.

Produced by Landmark
Premiered at Project Art’s Centre January 2024

★★★★★ the ‘triumph’ of Stephen Rea’s performance The Irish Times

Krapp Stephen Rea

Director Vicky Featherstone
Sound Designer Kevin Gleeson
Set Designer Jamie Vartan
Costume Designer Katie Davenport
Lighting Designer Paul Keogan

“Kevin Gleeson's associative music opens dream bridges into the world of anthroposophy”
Theater der Zeit

A child enters the stage and starts to speak. Is this a professional theatre performance or a school play? The child doesn't seem particularly old, but he understands Goethe, and his words appear very deliberate, almost predetermined, as if someone is speaking through him - but who? Perhaps he was just brought up that way? 

Rudolf Steiner founded the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart in 1919, and since then, Waldorf education has become a global success. But what many don’t realise is that it is all based on a specific idea of what children are - namely, that they are not really children at all, but very old souls. This idea is at the heart of Steiner's philosophical worldview: Anthroposophy.

Waldorf education remains controversial because of these spiritual, esoteric origins. But beyond the schools, Anthroposophy can be found throughout our modern world: in organic farming, the corporate philosophies of skincare products, homeopathic medicine, vaccine hesitancy. 100 years after his death, with the world in spiritual crisis, Steiner is suddenly everywhere.

The Education of Rudolf Steiner premiered on October 12th 2024, at Schauspiel Stuttgart.

Stage Design JEREMY HERBERT
Video Design SEBASTIAN DUPOUEY
Lighting Design JÖRG SCHUCHARDT
Sound Design and Composition KEVIN GLEESON
Costume Design MIRJAM PLEINES
Text by DEAD CENTRE
Directors BUSH MOUKARZEL & BEN KIDD

IMAGES by Thomas Aust

In her 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag sets out to diagnose the problem with the way we think about illness. Her discovery was not to focus on sickness itself, but the language surrounding disease - language that can, in her view, quite literally kill. 

Working with six participants living with long-term illness, Dead Centre adapt this groundbreaking text for the theatre, which is itself a metaphoric space. So, if all the world’s a stage, how can theatre deal with reality?

Perhaps, through inviting in some real people, theatre can be re-invented as a place where we might live, and die, without metaphor.

After all, the one thing you can’t do on stage is pretend your body isn’t there.

Illness as Metaphor premiered on September 8th 2024, at Project Arts Centre as part of Dublin Fringe Festival.

Stage Design ELLEN KIRK
Video Design KILIAN WATERS
Lighting Design STEPHEN DODD
Sound Design and Composition KEVIN GLEESON
Costume Design MAE LEAHY

Text by DEAD CENTRE AND THE CAST
Producer TILLY TAYLOR
Directors BUSH MOUKARZEL & BEN KIDD

IMAGES by José Miguel Jimenéz and Simon Lazewski

by Göteborg Stadsteater

Premiere 5 November 2021

Av Ingmar Bergman
Bearbetning Mark O'Halloran, Dead Centre
Regi Bush Moukarzel
Ljuddesign och Kompositör Kevin Gleeson
Videoregi Grant Gee
Scenografi Jeremy Herbert
Kostymdesign Maja Kall
Maskdesign Patricia Svajger
Ljusdesign Max Mitle

“Ingenious.”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Kurier

“The Akademietheater amazes with an intellectual obstacle course… a great evening… a small stage sensation.”
Die Zeit

“It succeeds, not least because of the first-class technical implementation and fine dramaturgy.”
Nachtkritik

What is philosophy for? Does it help us change the world or even, at the very least, understand it?

Wittgenstein’s major philosophical work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus makes the claim that when it comes to the most important issues - the problem of life - words fail us: “it is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.”

There is no language to talk about what is happening, and we would do better to remain silent.

REGIE BUSH MOUKARZEL / BEN KIDD
BÜHNE UND KOSTÜME NINA WETZEL
VIDEO SOPHIE LUX
SOUNDDESIGN UND MUSIK KEVIN GLEESON
LICHT MARCUS LORAN
DRAMATURGIE ANDREAS KARLAGANIS

A person stands on a stage. You look at him. That is the moment when theatre is created. But what if this person looks back? When he looks at you, what happens then? Is that still theatre? Or has a golden rule been broken?

From ancient Greek tragedy, through 18th Century Vienna, to the modern anatomy theatre, the threads of KATHARSIS are inspired by stories from Olga Tokarczuk's novel Flights. It is the story of an actor and his body, about what is in it, about who looks at it, and what should happen to it after he dies.

KATHARSIS premiered March 18th 2023 at Akademietheater, Vienna.

Stage Design JEREMY HERBERT
Sound Design & Music KEVIN GLEESON
Video Design SOPHIE LUX
Lighting Design MARCUS LOREN
Costume Design MIRJAM PLEINES

Dramaturg ALEX KERLIN
Assistant Director SEBASTIAN MCKIMM
Sensitivity Reader DANIEL BITOUH
Stage Design Assistant FELIX HUBER
Costume Assistant ANJANA BERGER

Direction BUSH MOUKARZEL, BEN KIDD

by Dead Centre
Produced by Burgtheater, Vienna

“A book like a dream. As groundbreaking as it is controversial. Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams is no less impenetrable than the soul it strives to illuminate. It is a confused guide to the scenes we see in our dreams and, consequently, to our ego, which is what dreams are all about, says Freud. His entire life he regarded this work as his magnum opus, as the foundation stone of psychoanalysis and as a scientific guide to understanding dreams. Freud was convinced that he could solve the mysteries of dreams and gain access to the soul, which he describes as an obscure desiring machine.

The British-Irish theatrical duo Dead Centre create intelligent yet entertaining adaptations of the great works of Western culture. With great relish, they upset the separation between the onstage fiction and the audience’s reality. In their first production in Vienna, they create a “theatrical dream workshop” that leads from Dr Freud’s treatment room at Berggasse 19 into our own childhood bedrooms, where nightmares lurk in the dark of night.”

REGIE BUSH MOUKARZEL / BEN KIDD
BÜHNE UND KOSTÜME NINA WETZEL
VIDEO SOPHIE LUX
SOUNDDESIGN UND MUSIK KEVIN GLEESON
LICHT MARCUS LORAN
DRAMATURGIE ANDREAS KARLAGANIS

by Dead Centre

During the turmoil of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Maria Chekhov, Anton’s sister, placed many of her late brother’s manuscripts and papers in a safety deposit box in Moscow. In 1921 Soviet scholars opened the box, and discovered a play. The title page was missing. The play they found has too many characters, too many themes, too much action. All in all, it’s generally dismissed as unstageable. Like life. Chekhov before he was Chekhov.

Headphones are provided and worn throughout the performance. 

Chekhov’s First Play won BEST SOUND DESIGN at the IRISH TIMES THEATRE AWARDS 2016 and was nominated for BEST PRODUCTION. Chekhov's First Play toured extensively throughout 2016 & 2017 including performances in Berlin, London, Bordeaux, Brisbane, Groningen, Lausanne, Bristol, Tbilisi, Hong Kong, Bucharest, Amsterdam & St. Petersburg.

Text by Anton Chekhov, Ben Kidd and Bush Moukarzel
Set Design Andrew Clancy
Sound Design Kevin Gleeson and Jimmy Eadie
Effects and Onstage Design Grace O'Hara
Costumes Saileóg O'Halloran
Light Stephen Dodd
Choreography Liv O'Donoghue

by Dead Centre
after »The Tempest« by William Shakespeare
Produced by Schaubühne, Berlin

Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest, takes place nowhere. The magician Prospero − also believed to be Shakespeare’s last role as an actor − rules over an unnamed island, a place where those stranded on it experience boredom, terror, grief, euphoria and despair. In other words, they are in a theatre.

Premiered
24 April, 2018
Saal C, Schaubühne, Berlin

Direction Ben Kidd, Bush Moukarzel
Set Design Chloe Lamford
Music & Sound Design Kevin Gleeson
Costume Design Nina Wetzel
Video José Miguel Jiménez González
Dramaturgy Nils Haarmann
Lighting Design Norman Plathe

by Dead Centre
Co-Produced by The Gate Theatre & Dublin Theatre Festival

★ ★ ★ ★
The Irish Times

A play without performers, BECKETT’S ROOM tells the story of the apartment in Paris where Samuel Beckett lived with his partner Suzanne during the second world war. A story of Art and Resistance, the audience listen through headphones and gaze upon a spectacle of absence - the absence of bodies on stage focuses us more intently on their stories, on the world changing around us, and changed by us. The biography of a room, and an invitation to bear witness to a world as it disappears.

Headphones are provided and worn throughout the performance.

Directors Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd
Producer Aisling Ormonde
Set Designer Andrew Clancy
Sound Design & Music Kevin Gleeson
Lighting Designer Stephen Dodd
Video Designer José Miguel Jiménez

by Dead Centre

William Shakespeare had one son named Hamnet. Hamnet died when he was 11. In 1599, Shakespeare wrote a play called Hamlet. A solo work for an eleven year old boy, Hamnet uses live video and dead video to bridge the gap between two generations, asking each other what they want to pass on and receive. 

Hamnet premiered at FIND festival 2017 in the Schaubhune, Berlin. It made it's Irish Premier in the Peacock Theatre in Dublin Theatre Festival 2017 in October.

Performed by Ollie West

Set Design Andrew Clancy
Costumes and Effects Grace O'Hara
Light Stephen Dodd
Sound Design Kevin Gleeson
Video Design Jose Miguel Jimenez
Choreography Liv O'Donoghue

by Dead Centre

An early iteration of a future project, To Be a Machine (Version 1.0) is an adaptation of the Wellcome prize-winning book by Mark O’Connell: an exploration of Transhumanism, a movement whose aim is to use technology to fundamentally change the human condition, to improve our bodies and minds to the point where we become something other, and better, than the animals we are.

In the midst of a global pandemic, where our bodies have become biohazards, transhumanists offer a way into a disease-free digital age. We follow Mark from cryonic storage facilities to basement biohacking labs as he meets the prophets of our techno-future. We use the theatre to hold a wake for the very idea of congregating together in a room, and a meditation on humanity’s attempt to solve the modest problem of death.

This adaptation was presented as a live-audience-upload-experience, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival. Premiere: October 1, 2020, streamed live from Project Arts Centre.

Performer Jack Gleeson
Featuring Mark O’Connell as himself
Adapted Mark O’Connell and Dead Centre from the book by Mark O’Connell
Technical Direction and Video Design Jack Phelan
Set Design Andrew Clancy
Sound Design and Music Kevin Gleeson
Lighting Design Stephen Dodd
Costume Designer Saileóg O’Halloran

★★★★
Sunday Times
★★★★
Sunday Business Post
★★★★
The Stage

After premiering To Be a Machine (Version 1.0) in Dublin in September 2020, Die Maschine in Mir is the German language premiere, created in partnership with Burgtheater, Vienna, featuring Michael Maertens.

In the midst of a lockdown in Vienna, where bodies have become biohazards, Die Maschine in Mir offered a new way of thinking about what it means to be an audience. On New Year’s Eve 2020, the theatre was used to hold a wake for the very idea of congregating together in a room, and a meditation on our attempt to solve the modest problem of death.

Premiere: December 31st, 2020, streamed live from Kasino im Burgtheater, Wien.

Performer Michael Maertens
Featuring Mark O’Connell as himself
Adapted Mark O’Connell and Dead Centre from the book by Mark O’Connell
German translation Henning Bochert
Technical Direction and Video Design Jack Phelan
Sound Design and Music Kevin Gleeson
Set Design Andrew Clancy
Lighting Design Stephen Dodd / Norbert Gottwald
Costume Design Saileóg O’Halloran / Maria-Lena Poindl

A moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare’s play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia, who is living in an old memory of rehearsing ‘King Lear’. Joy’s delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who, being cast as Cordelia, must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he’s given.

Using puppetry, projection and live video effects, the audience are landed in Joy’s world as layers of her past and present, fiction and reality, overlap and distort.

‘Lost Lear’ is a thought provoking meditation on theatre, artifice and the possibility of communicating across the chasms between us.

Written by Dan Colley, with the cast, after Shakespeare
Music by Daniel McAuley
Directed by Dan Colley
Produced by Matthew Smyth
Set Design Andrew Clancy
Lighting Design Suzie Cummins
Costume Design Cherie White
Sound Design Kevin Gleeson
Video Design Ross Ryder
Dramaturgy Gavin Kostick

Based on Mary Norton’s beloved adventure novels, THE BORROWERS follows the fortunes of the tiny Clock Family. The Clocks live secretly in the walls and floors of a country house and “borrow” from the big people in order to survive.

Their lives are plunged into chaos one day when the family’s youngest member, independent 11-year-old Arrietty, is seen by a ‘human bean’, a boy who is visiting the house. To survive, the Clocks must spread their wings and take a perilous and adventure-filled journey into the outside world to find a new home and search out their long-lost family members.

This Irish Premiere production of THE BORROWERS is directed by the Gate Theatre’s Artistic Director, Róisín McBrinn. The show, adapted for the stage from Norton’s novels by Charles Way, and features songs written and composed by Fionn Foley.

Director Róisín McBrinn
Set & Costume Designer Paul Wills
Lighting Designer Sarah Jane Shiels
Video Designer Dick Straker
Sound Designer Kevin Gleeson
Movement Director Róisín Whelan
Musical Supervisor David Hayes
Assistant Director Éadaoin Fox

Innovative multidisciplinary theatre makers, ANU, in partnership with the Abbey Theatre, excavated the final moments of the Battle of Dublin in HAMMAM, a powerful, immersive play written and directed by Louise Lowe.

Staged in a totally re-imagined Peacock Theatre, audiences traversed the depths of the destroyed buildings of O’Connell Street to explore one of the most contentious elements of Ireland’s difficult past and its enduring legacy in the present.

Writer and Director: Louise Lowe
Set Designer: Owen Boss
Set Designer: Maree Kearns
Costume Designer: Sailéog O'Halloran
Lighting Designer: Ciaran Bagnall
Composer: Rob Moloney
Sounds Designer: Kevin Gleeson

Produced by The Gate Theatre

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Irish Times

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Irish Mail on Sunday

The last two people at a house-warming party. Two hearts on the shelf. Are they brave enough to fall?

Director Marc Atkinson
Set & Costume Designer Sarah Bacon
Sound Designer Kevin Gleeson
Lighting Designer Sinéad McKenna
Movement Director David Bolger
Assistant Set Designer Stefania Pantavos
Assistant Director (intern) Annachiara Vispi

Produced by the Gate Theatre

★★★★★
Irish Times

★★★★
The Guardian

Three retired nuclear scientists. A crumbling cottage by the sea. The fallout from life, love and nuclear power stations.

Director Oonagh Murphy
Set & Costume Designer Sarah Bacon
Lighting Designer Sinéad McKenna
Sound Designer Kevin Gleeson
Assistant Set Designer Stefania Pantavos

by Dylan Tighe
Co-Produced with The Abbey Theatre

Pasolini’s Salò Redubbed daringly transposes Pasolini’s notorious final film to Ireland. This radical adaptation by Dylan Tighe explores the beliefs and values behind ‘coercive confinement’ and their enduring impact on the power relations and injustices of contemporary Ireland. Pasolini’s Salò Redubbed is a fearless allegory of abuses of power, structural violence, masculinity and class supremacy.

Set Design Aedín Cosgrove and Dylan Tighe
Lighting Design Aedín Cosgrove
Video Design José Miguel Jiménez
Post-Production Sound Design Kevin Gleeson
Costume Supervisor and Stylist Ellen Kirk
Assistant Director Grace Morgan

by Cois Ceim Dance Theatre, Crash Ensemble & Fishamble the New Play Company

★ ★ ★ ★
The Irish Times

Contemporary dance, music & theatre show inspired by the life and work of renowned irish designer and architect Eileen Gray. 
Premiered at the 2016 Galway International Arts

Direction David Bolger, Jim Culleton
Script Gavin Kostick
Original Score Deirdre Gribbin
Choreography David Bolger
Musical Director Kate Ellis
Design Maree Kearns
Sound Design Kevin Gleeson
Lighting Design Sinéad Mckenna
Hair & Makeup Design Val Sherlock

by Liv O’ Donoghue

★ ★ ★ ★
The Irish Times

Combining physicality and performance with documentary footage and live feed video, AFTER features a cast of international dancers, physical actors and a filmmaker from Ireland, Norway, Chile, and the UK.

Sound Design & Music Kevin Gleeson
Video Design José Miguel Jiménez
Set Design Eugenia Genunchi
Lighting Design Sarah Jane Shiels