Patricia Leggett Recipients: Where Are They Now?
Check-in on our Patricia Leggett Recipients! The Patricia Leggett Playwriting Scholarship is a fully paid scholarship for a place on the MFA in Playwriting degree at The Lir Academy.
Aoife Leonard - 2016
Aoife Leonard began working in theatre at age 17, performing with the improvisational theatre troupe Playback As Soon As You Hear and interning as an assistant producer with THEATREclub and Spilt Gin. She was subsequently offered an unconditional place on the Drama and Theatre Studies course at Trinity College Dublin. She has applied her experience in improvisation and playwriting to a number of devising contexts, developing shows for the Dublin Fringe with Filibusters and Just The Lads. She has a close collaborative relationship with Collapsing Horse Theatre Company and has worked with them on The Aeneid. She graduated with First Class Honours from Trinity College.
Since graduating, Aoife has shifted her focus from screenwriting to being a creative producer. She is involved in Ireland’s music scene, creating music videos for artists like CMAT, Rob de Boer, Morgana, and Frank Zing. Other notable projects are commercial and ad works with Remus Uomo, Jameson, Other Voices, and Failte Ireland. Aoife also does photography on the side. Her most recent work has been as a production manager for Trasna na Líne (dir Niamh Bryson), a mockumentary comedy following student teacher Emma during her first day of term at Dublin Gaelscoli without a word of Irish.
Clare McMahon - 2017
Clare trained as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has worked predominantly as an actor across the UK and Ireland. Her first short play ‘Slow’ was held at the Bush Theatre London as a rehearsed reading. In 2017 Clare’s debut sell-out play, ‘Shakespeare’s Women’ was produced by Commedia of Errors Theatre Company, at The Lyric Theatre Belfast before touring NI. Clare was recently awarded an Individual Artist Award from Arts Council NI. Clare’s new play, ‘Women Troubles’, a female comedy focusing on growing up sold out its run at The Barracks Belfast.
Clare is currently under commission with Commedia of Errors. Here she has had the opportunity to work on LILY, a 360 virtual reality film, forming half of the project. Clare’s Lyric Theatre mainstage debut was The Gap Year. Previous works include Shakespeare’s Women, I am Muara, and Women Troubles (co-writer). As an actor, Clare has been in works such as The Cripple of Inshmaan, A Midsummer Nights Dream at The Almeida, and Twist of Gold by Philip Pullman. She was seen on Television playing Fanny in The Woman in White (BBC1) and Carlo in Agatha - The Truth of Murder (Netflix).
Breman Rajkumar - 2017
Breman is a British Tamil playwright, who started writing plays while reading PPE at Warwick University. He was awarded the Directors Guild Award and Sunday Times Playwriting Award in 2013 with a show that toured Scarborough, the Edinburgh Fringe, and Hampshire that summer. He assistant-directed RIFCO’s mid-scale tour of “The Deranged Marriage” at Watford Palace Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse. He was recently shortlisted for Papatango’s Resident Playwright competition and longlisted for the Lyric Theatre, Belfast’s New Playwright Programme. He has led workshops in prisons with Synergy Theatre and for young people with NT Learning.
Since graduating, Breman has worked on productions such as The Half God Rainfall at Birmingham REP, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at Leeds Playhouse, and Wife and White Teeth at the Kiln Theatre. Breman has created a playwriting program, Diverse Voices: Writing the Future, to give a platform to the diverse voices of students at the Central Foundation Girls’ School. This program is aimed at developing creative skills through a series of workshops where students are able to express their creativity through writing a play.
CN Smith - 2020
CN Smith is a graduate of Drama & Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin, where he directed Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (Samuel Beckett Theatre, 2019), and Eden (ISDA ‘Best Production’ Nominee, 2019). As a playwright, his work includes co-writing Where Are You From? (Scene + Heard, 2019), the radio play Ode to a Postcode (Dublin Fringe, 2019), Floozie (Scene + Heard, 2020), abagofspiders! (Samuel Beckett Theatre, 2020), and At the Very Beginning (Civic Theatre, 2020/21). He was an inaugural member of the Abbey Theatre’s Young Curators program in 2018/2019 and was a recipient of the Patricia Leggett Playwriting Scholarship for 2020.
Colin worked on redrafting his play Before You Head Off while at Six in the Attic. His play SPEAR is a Dublin Fringe Festival Commission for 2022. Colin is also a part of Fishamble and The Irish Rep’s inaugural Trans-Atlantic Commissions, where he spent a year working under the mentorship of Dael Orlandersmith, the Obie Award-winning playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist. Last year, out of 350 applicants, Colin was announced as a Rough Ideas winner, receiving an award of €2,500. He was able to spend the following year working on his piece with the RM Literary Manager and Artistic Director. More recently, Colin has been working on a show that explores the Big House burnings that occurred in Ireland from 1919 to 1923 at Draíocht’s Workshop Room.
