May 2013 NUI Galway Student Wins BBC Theatre Award

Máiréad Ní Chróinín, Digital Arts & Humanities PhD student at NUI Galway, yesterday received the BBC Northern Ireland Irish Language Theatre Award on behalf of her company Moonfish Theatre.  The award is part of the Stewart Parker Trust Awards and was presented in the Abbey Theatre by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins. 

Set up in honour of the late Belfast playwright, Stewart Parker, each year the Trust offers awards to new Irish playwrights to encourage new writing for the theatre throughout Ireland.

Máiréad is co-director, with her sister Ionia, of Moonfish Theatre in Galway, and the company was awarded the prize for their bi-lingual show 'Tromluí Phinocchio / Pinocchio - a Nightmare'.  The show premiered in Galway in March 2012, and went on to have successful runs in the Dublin Fringe Festival and on the main stage in Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in 2012, before touring nationally in March 2013.

The show will be onstage again in Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe as part of the Babaró International Children's Festival in Galway in October 2013.

Kate Costello, an NUI Galway graduate who teaches on the NUI Galway BA Connect programme was producer for the Moonfish Theatre production. The BA CONNECT programme at NUI Galway is a four-year BA degree which offers all the benefits of a two-subject Bachelor of Arts degree together with a specialism of your choice.

ENDS