Biography

Declan Gorman is a native of Monaghan and a long-time resident of Fingal. He has worked as an actor, writer, director and educator. His most recent public work of scale was as Director/Producer of A Personal Prism a new play by David Joyce inspired by David’s lived experience as a young adult with a disability. The show premiered at the Black Box Galway in November 2024.

Declan was co-founder with Joe O’Byrne of Co-Motion Theatre Company, Dublin, acting in many 1980s shows, including Song of the White Man’s Burden and The Sinking of the Titanic, and producing the original Frank Pig Says Hello by Patrick McCabe (1992

From 1990 – 95 he was Theatre Programmer at City Arts Centre Dublin.

In 1997 he established Upstate Theatre Project, Drogheda, where he wrote and directed The Weavers (after Hauptmann); The Green Fool (after Kavanagh); Hades (Stewart Parker/BBC Award); Epic and At Peace. Other notable work at Upstate was collaboratng with Declan Mallon on a range of pioneering community-engaged drama programmes, including the (cross-border) Crossover project and Louth International, (2008) a groundbreaking intercultural initiative which culminated with a devised warehouse performance on migration: The Journey from Babel.

Freelance since 2010, Declan has toured in Ireland, Norway, Russia, USA, Canada, Britain and India, with his James Joyce solo shows The Dubliners Dilemma and Falling Through the Universe.

He was Arts Council Theatre Artist in Residence for Co. Monaghan in 2018-19 and has led public art and community theatre projects of scale in Monaghan, Louth and Dublin, most notably THE STREETS OF JJ CLARKE an outdoor community performance around the town of Castleblayney, and THE GREEN BELT, a major Fingal County Council commission (2019-21) which culminated in 25 performances at 25 outdoor sites, involving over 120 local particpants.

His 2016 play The Big Fellow (after Frank O’Connor) toured in Ireland and to India. Between 2018 and 2022 he worked closely with performer/researcher Sharon McArdle develping her orignal solo performance Prison Notebooks based on previously unpublished diaries of Dorothy Macardle (performed at Kilmainham Gaol / Smock Alley 2022, and subject of an RTE Lyric FM feature documentary).

During Covid he directed The Pilgrims of Slieve a play for Zoom devised by Aisteoirí Muinchille, finally actually meeting the members of this innovative Cootehill community group in 2024 to facilitate the in-person collective writing of a short play, The Veil is Thin. Also in Co.Cavan, he directed The Half Coat by Tara Maria Lovett for Culture Night 2023 at Cavan Museum, and in 2022-23, he was visiting writer on the Cavan-Monaghan Bordering Realities project collaborating with playwright Alice Lynch and the Kilnaleck Youth Drama Society.

Declan has sat on many boards and cultural working groups, and was Acting Chair of Draíocht towards the end of his seven year membership there. He is currently holder of a 2024 Bealtaine Professional Development Award, and a former winner of a Stewart Parker/BBC new playwriting award. He has won bursaries from The Arts Council, Fingal County Council and Monaghan County Council. He holds an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin and has taught community-engaged theatre at the University of Galway and New York University. He is currently a Creative Associate on the Arts Council Creative Schools Programme, a trainer on the Teacher Artist Partnership (primary) programme and a member of the design team for the OIDE Teacher-Artist initiative for secondary schools (2024).

The previously separate areas of his educational theatre work and his love of James Joyce came together in November 2024 when he was invited to Reunion Island (near Madagascar) to facilitate an international student exchange inspired by Joyce’s story Eveline!

For anyone interested in a more colourful account, detailing the highs and the lows of a life in the independent theatre, you might enjoy a blog published on this site and on RTE Digital in 2016.   It was written at a time when the effects of the 2009-2014 recession were still quite raw and immediate.  I am pleased that the note of optimism struck at the end of the essay has been borne out by events!  Behind the Biography: Careering through the Arts. 

Updated January 2025