Welcome to the website of Declan Gorman Arts & Events.
I am a playwright, director, performer and public artist with a practice that has covered many aspects of the arts. At the core is an unswerving belief in the power of live performance – the working towards it and the sharing of it – to change, entertain, question, and somehow to make the world around us a better and more exciting place.
This website contains information about current projects (including work available to tour); selected archive materials; resources and a “News & Views” section which combines news with occasional reflections and personal essays, mainly but not exclusively about the arts.
COVID 19 UPDATE 30/12/2020: Like every other theatre artist in Ireland, I was compelled to cancel a raft of significant performance and workshop projects during the year just ended. I was confined to home from mid-March until mid-July and again to a lesser degree in each of the subsequent lockdowns. Where many of my peers and friends in the theatre (artists and technicians) have suffered exceptional setbacks, I have been fortunate in retaining a number of educational and public art commissions, enough to survive.
Much of my work at present takes place online, although I have gone out to visit schools, adhering to safe social distancing protocols. In one rural primary school I conducted a series of weekly drama workshops in the school yard in ever cooling temperatures!
I moved from an initial distrust of Zoom to coming to terms with it and have greatly enjoyed facilitating on-screen workshops with community participants in Cavan, Monaghan, Louth and Fingal! I am grateful to Fingal and Monaghan County Councils who have continued to support and commission my work, and to the Arts Council which has laboured hard to ensure the Creative Schools programme continues in adapted circumstances. Above all I appreciate the keen and good-humoured interactions with both professional colleagues and members of the wider public with whom I have been priviliged to work through this bizarre year. I am confident that by this time next year, we shall be back in theatres and rehearsal rooms, schools and colleges making live performances with renewed relish!
