Trinity College Dublin is a place known to foster and celebrate innovative creativity, with hard working brilliant young minds coming together to produce a plethora of original works, particularly in the theatre department. To commemorate and acknowledge these achievements, the writers in the Theatre Section of the University Times sat down with five outstanding playwrights and actors in separate interviews to learn more about what they all have created lately.
Original Plays by Jess Watson, Fourth Year Drama Studies Student (she/her)
Theatre Editor Catherine Furby spoke with Jess Watson, an extremely talented actress and playwright in her final year at Trinity. Her journey with writing plays has been varied, from independent works to teaching an eight week playwriting course with Trinity’s Players Society in third year after a few of her original pieces had been produced. “I had always been an actor and a singer, but never a writer. And then suddenly I was asked to teach writing!” She went on to explain that writing is a process of continuous learning, and teaching was an excellent way to harness her own skills and the skills of her students. When asked about what she learned about playwriting from her experience teaching, she said, “It’s not about trying to be great. That’s the beauty in believing in your ability to attempt something new, it can create a piece born from the raw love for the act of writing.” With a focus on the word ‘attempt’, Watson told me that she’s constantly experimenting with her works, going into it with the mindset of simply trying her best, which is something she passed down to her students.
Some of her own works include the plays, The Afterdeath, It’s Time to Get Off the Train, Where Does It Start, I Hate Football in the Riverside Studios, COUSINS performed at the Cockpit, and most recently, Ready, Set… FUCK, which was performed at the Golden Goose Theatre. In writing her first play, the words “flowed out” of her, as she put it. With a background in acting, she’s performed in most of her original plays as well. The reception to her works have been incredibly positive, but Watson said, “I think what’s mattered more is that I liked it! That will always be the most important thing, that you’re making the theatre that you want to see.”
In response to being asked what piece she was the proudest of, Watson told me more about It’s Time to Get Off the Train. It was her first full length play that she starred in as well. It ran for a week in the Players Theatre, in Michaelmas Term of 2023. After its success in Trinity, Watson submitted it to the UK National Theatre panel who highly commended it, and she told me it really inspired her to keep going.
Watson intends to keep writing and acting in her original works, because acting is an integral part to everything she does and hopes to accomplish. Recently, she did some work experience with the BBC to learn more about the work that goes into recording and creating scripts. She’s also been working on her final year Capstone project, an original play about the harmful effects of social media in perpetuating already present social pressures to young people. This play will be put on in April in the Samuel Beckett Theatre.
If you’re interested in reading or learning more about what Watson is writing and acting in, you can find more information on her Instagram page, @works_by_watson.
An Original Play, Unspoken, by Inigo Morton, Third Year Drama Studies Student (they/them)
Contributing Writer Lily Ainsley sat down in an interview with Indigo Morton, who over the summer created an original piece, titled Unspoken. Morton informed Ainsley that they’ve been writing stories since they were ten years old, and this was the first time they tackled a play. The conversation that ensued was one about society’s inherent ableism, which the play shines a light on.
This is a play that will create conversation about themes that society does not tend to mention. The one act play is about a woman who is unable to speak and it showcases her life and the difficulties that surround her. Unspoken is a conversation on how society, particularly younger people, can be ableist and how to combat the stigma of being different than most people. Morton explains, “Unspoken is an allegory on subconscious ableism, using real life stories for the play.” They are planning to put it on with Trinity College Dublin’s DU Players this year, so keep an eye out for it.
Daniel O Brien, Actor, Third Year PPES Student (he/him)
Contributing writer Lily Walsh spoke with third year Daniel O’Brien about his journey from actor to teacher, as well as the projects he has recently been a part of. An active member of the DU Players since his first year in Trinity, this year Daniel has stepped into a new role: acting teacher with the Players Introductory Programme. PIPs is just one programme run by DU Players that allows students to learn about and perform a new role in theatre. Participants can join, among others, Acting, Writing, Directing, Props, and Lighting classes, and put their new skills to use in a collaborative show performed at the end of the programme. When asked about the transition from acting on-stage to teaching acting, he said “It’s so different. I think acting is a very personal sort of process, a lot of the time when I’m doing it I’m throwing shots in the dark.” According to Daniel, the most important thing he has realised about teaching is that it is about helping people gain confidence. “It’s about helping people be comfortable with themselves, because what works for me won’t work with everybody else.”
His teaching debut comes after a busy year on the stage, as he played many principal roles in Players productions. In April 2024 Daniel performed as Joey in Chop!, a “dark semi-romantic comedy” written and directed by Maeve Sheehan. The play was well-received at the time, and a year later the crew were invited to travel to Belfast and perform at the Irish Society Drama Awards festival in Belfast in April 2025. Not only was Daniel there with the Chop! team, but also as part of the cast of Shades, written by Mark Harvey Levine and performed in December of 2024. Shades was a unique, 12 minute play that reenacted one conversation multiple times, revealing new layers to the characters’ thoughts and emotions with each one. It received the Best Ensemble Cast Award at ISDA. Daniel spoke fondly about the great experience of going to these awards with two shows he really loved and receiving an award. “For something like drama, it’s kind of hard to know where you stand with people and what they think of you…so it’s nice to get a bit of validation.” When asked what constitutes success for him, Daniel replied, “I think if you’re acting for success, the main thing is that other people will see that. It’ll probably translate as fake. If I like what I’ve done I’m obviously going to be happy.”
Daniel will be taking a short break from Players in the upcoming months, as he will spend next term in Boston, but he hopes to stay involved with theatre at his new college. Look out for him in many more Players productions when he returns next year!
Jessie Byrne, Actor, Fourth Year Drama and Theatre Studies (She/her)
Deputy Theatre Editor Amelia Sikora had the pleasure of sitting down with the Chair of Trinity’s DU Players, Jessie Byrne, to discuss her acting experience both in Trinity and at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Byrne has been performing since the age of seven, when she was encouraged to join her local youth theatre in Wexford, and has been acting ever since. She has incorporated this passion into every aspect of her university life; whether it be her degree, overseeing the Players Theatre, auditing for plays and performing in the Beckett Theatre, or taking part in Player’s Improv She Wrote, Jessie Byrne is fully immersed in all that the art has to offer.
Since arriving in Trinity, Byrne has performed in two shows at the Beckett Theatre. Her first being in her second year: A Mile High in Polka Dots, and more recently, Eveoe, an adaptation of The Bacchae. Both pieces were part of other students’ capstone projects; Byrne used this to elucidate the significance of the co-operative nature of the theatre community here at Trinity, and to acknowledge the opportunities that it has given her. She is currently in the process of rehearsing for her own capstone project: an adaptation of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, a piece which will guide audiences through different adaptations of the text and track how Vanya changes in each.
This summer Byrne completed her greatest theatrical feat to date: she had the opportunity to perform at the renowned Edinburgh fringe. She played the character ‘BOOM’ in an absurdist play, Go West, directed by Lucy Bracken and Aoife Cronin, both graduates of Trinity College and founders of Aimsir Theatre. Byrne described how the pair spotted her in a Player’s event, and asked if she would participate in their project, to which she naturally replied in the affirmative. Go West was first performed at Summer Fest, before heading on to Smock Alley Theatre’s Scene and Heard festival, and was then finally picked up by the Edinburgh fringe. This is Byrne’s first professional acting credit, and her first experience acting for audiences outside of Ireland. She describes her time there as fast paced and ‘jarring’ yet simultaneously exhilarating. From handing out fliers advertising the show on the Royal Mile and gaining the reputation of being ‘the crazy cowboys’, to performing the show multiple times in the span of a few days, Byrne attributes this experience as significant to the way in which she plans to approach future productions: “I don’t think I was ever so present on stage with a character than I have been with the character I play in Go West”. The play received an incredible five stars from ‘North West End UK’ and was highly praised by critics and audience members. Crucial to her performance was her prevailing determination that despite the fact that the fringe goers would attend more than one show that day, she would “make sure that this is the one that they would remember”.
Byrne continued to talk about her creative process, acting methods and the strategies that she uses when approaching new roles. She first performs a close reading of the text, analyses character intentions and motivations before determining how this will affect how the character will move, speak and come to life. I asked her whether she took anything from her past roles to her new ones, and in response she stated that: “every single show that I do, every single character that I do, if something from them works; I’m using it in the next character that I play” then remarking that she hopes that this will “ keep on building forever”. When discussing the acting craft, Byrne specifically emphasised how the ‘liveness aspect’ of theatre ‘hardens an actor’, and how theatre as an art is made exceptional because of this very fact. “Everytime you see a play, even if you see the same play on a different night, it’s completely new. It’s never the same thing, you never get to see the same show twice, which is really beautiful. You don’t get that expressed with any other form of art. Everything else, you make it and it’s there, but theatre is live and its happening in the moment, its real”
The conversation inevitably led to Byrne’s plans for the future and how she wishes to proceed with theatre after Trinity, to which she responded: “I enjoy doing this so much, if other people can do it for the rest of their life, I want to be able to do that too”. She has no immediate plans for leaving Ireland, telling me that “there’s so much merit in staying in Dublin, where our roots are, connected with the history of everything that we’ve been working with for the last four years”. Eventually, she hopes to receive professional training by doing a masters degree or getting a form of conservatoire training.
Byrne is sure to continue creating a sensation in the Irish acting scene so make sure to keep an eye out for her and for her upcoming work in the Beckett theatre.
Original Play BUTTER&SALT by Sarah Webb, Third Year English Studies Student (she/her)
Contributing Writer Meabh Kenny had the opportunity to sit down with Sarah Webb, a third year English Studies student who is a talented actress and has recently written an original play BUTTER&SALT.
In addition to writing the play, Webb co-directed BUTTER&SALT alongside co-director, Alex Garguláková. It was on stage during Player’s Summerfest from the 27th – 28th of May, 2025. BUTTER&SALT explores mother-daughter relationships and themes of female violence, brutal honesty, and mental health. Set in Ireland in the early 2000s, the play never leaves the kitchen, creating a vacuum to explore the mother (played by Lir graduate, Joanie McGrath) and the daughter (Lilas Grace Bailey, also a recent Lir graduate)’s complex relationship.
The play takes place vaguely all in the same day, featuring normal conversations between the pair. Webb wrote the piece with technical elements in mind which her brilliant crew were able to achieve; beginning the play with the song “Peter Bogdanovich” by CMAT and ending with “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!” Webb said that CMAT’s song-writing somewhat inspired the play, as her lyrics are, “catchy but break your heart.” Similarly, BUTTER&SALT was received with tears and panicked faces. An intimate play setting, where in one scene the mother and daughter Waltz around the audience. Webb wanted this unexpected moment to grapple with physical touch as it relates to mother-daughter relationships and contrasts the physical violence in the play.
At the end of the Waltz scene, the mother has a “dancing fit” on stage, reflecting the mother’s Glass-Menagerie-like desire for a life she could not have, reliving her youth through techno dance-tunes. Webb discussed female violence in contrast to men’s violence, “[women] yearn for it to come as naturally as us as it does to men.” The daughter, particularly frustrated by this, yearns to use violence as power just as men do while her mother has an identity crisis while pregnant at 60 years old. Webb discussed the 2025 film, Hot Milk, which also centers around the overpowering intricacies of mother-daughter relationships informed by love, responsibility, and trauma. In both Hot Milk and BUTTER&SALT ambiguous endings suggest the death of the mother. In BUTTER&SALT, it’s insinuated when the mother leaves the stage, closing the door behind her, that she takes her own life — leaving behind her daughter calling out to her, banging on the door. Webb commented that her play, where the title similarly takes simple kitchen staples and the content provides something as given as a mother and daughter’s bond, exaggerates and dramatizes both of these elements in order to unearth these often ignored themes of female rage, familial relationships, and patriarchal frustration.
Webb said if she could re-do the play she would like to flesh it out more, as the piece was only 20 minutes long. Webb is delighted to see so many more dramas surrounding mother-daughter relationships coming to the stage/screen, like Hot Milk.
After talking with the University Times, Webb began to prepare for a writer’s workshop with Marina Carr, one of her favourite playwrights and inspirations. Webb is also currently working on proposing her creative capstone for her final year, she’s hoping to write a play which explores death, religion, and reincarnation through supernatural elements and experimental theater. Also on the horizon, Webb is waiting to hear back about a play she submitted to Smock Alley Theatre for 2026. Webb has been involved in 26 plays total since her first year in college doing acting, writing, directing, set design, and more. When asked what advice she would give to someone just starting out, she recommended Player’s Introductory Programme (PIPS), trying everything, and stressed the importance of safety in backstage roles!
