The Lir Academy is renowned as one of the top performing arts conservatoires in the world. Offering undergraduate and postgraduate courses as well as diplomas in stage management and technical theatre, acting, directing, playwriting and stage design, it has boasted alumni such as Paul Mescal, Alison Oliver, and Danielle Galigan. It goes without saying that its alumni play a vital role in bringing life and innovation to the cultural life in Dublin, as well as the international arts scene. The University Times had the pleasure of sitting down with alumni Amelia Hauer to discuss her experience, and her work at the Dublin Fringe Festival.
Amelia Hauer is a graduate of the Bachelor in Stage Management and Technical Theatre honours programme. This year she acted as the stage manager for the production “West Meath Gothic” at the Dublin Fringe Festival, one of the most highly rated productions that the festival had to offer, with the Irish Times reviewing it as “everything a Fringe show should be.”
Hauer was drawn to the course due to her penchant for organisation, a deep love of planning, and in her words, “the pure adrenaline of calling a show”. During her three years at the Lir, she had the opportunity of studying all aspects of theatre: sound, lighting, set, costume, film — you name it. She worked as part of the crew on sets for professional directors and designers throughout and her final year presented her with the opportunity of working through various placements and development programmes, all of which were instrumental to her career today.
“I thought [the programme] was a brilliant experience. You learn everything, best practice and the way that it is in the industry. It is an intense course. Some weeks we were doing seventy hour weeks, Saturdays and working twelve hour days. It was intense, but you kind of build up stamina to it and it sets you up for any long days you might have in the industry.”
Studying at the Lir exposed Hauer to all different kinds of performing art, beyond the world of theatre. She did her first placement with Wexford Festival Opera in the autumn of 2024, where she worked on the Factory Concert and honed in on her stage managing skills. In the spring of 2025 she did her placement with RTÉ, where she worked on the Eurovision costumes for Team Ireland, and helped create Emmys turquoise carpet look for the team’s presentation in Basel. Having worked on all kinds of productions, Hauer stated that she had grown to prefer theatre:
“I find theatre a bit more interesting. It’s faster paced and you’re more busy, there’s more to do. Film can be a lot of standing around and redoing the same thing over, and over, but you know, they’re quite different. I do like both.”
Hauer naturally fell into theatre roles, and this year, she had the pleasure of working on Kate Finnegan’s “West Meath Gothic” which premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival at the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar from September 16th-19th.
“The show is about a woman named Olwyn. It’s set in rural Ireland. She’s sort of isolated in this Gothic style house and she’s got this radio and she’s lonely, but the radio starts talking to her. It sort of ignites this fantasy of all the different potential versions there could have been of Olwyn. Each fantasy, each different version of Olwyn, has a different sort of performance in it — it’s got aerial hoops and it’s a lot of fun! There’s lots. It’s only an hour long, but it’s jam packed.”
The show features visually striking aerial performance, physical theatre, as well as live electronic music, all aspects which Hauer had to learn to juggle. This, of course, introduced new challenges: “how do I block an aerial hoop performance? You kind of figure it out as you go.”
“It’s actually quite phenomenal. I don’t know how they do it. They’re up at the top of a silk and then they let go and drop down to two centimeters below or above […] you just have to trust that the performers know what they’re doing.”
Hauer devoted much of her time to the rehearsal room with Katie O’Halloran (the director), Kate Finegan (the main performer), Darrell Ellioft (another performer and counterweight artist), and Brian Dillon (the sound designer and composer on stage).
“We set up everything in the morning, and then we just work through the show, scene by scene […] So my role — I’m also operating sound and looking after the Q-lab, which is basically the list of cues that you operate with throughout the show. I’ve got over one hundred sound cues, so it’s quite sound intense, especially for a one hour show […] During rehearsals I’ve got my prompt book in front of me, which is the show’s book of all the blocking, everyone’s movement for each line, all the cues and technical stuff. I’m basically keeping track of everything in the rehearsal room in the book, and then writing in cues that will be called during the show.”
“I’m in charge of all the schedules and what we do each day, and then I also have a report that I send out at the end of the day. So anything that happens in rehearsal, I send out to the rest of the company in case we need an extra prop, the set designer will do that and she’ll know to bring that in. If any notes come up for the lighting designer during rehearsal, I’ll put them in the report, so that everyone is clued in on what’s been going on throughout the day.”
The organisational aspect of the role is what Hauer excels in, and what brings her the most gratification. She tells me that her favourite part of her job is:
“Probably when everything just works. The other day we did a run for the first time and everything just worked smoothly. It was like, wow. We’d do different scenes individually and so many problems would come up within each little scene, and we were like, okay, we’re going to just do a run, see how it goes, and it ran smoothly. Everyone remembered everything. Moment’s like that where it just comes together.”
Hauer is currently doing an M.Phil. in Digital Arts and Intermedia Practices in Trinity whilst still remaining active in the industry and working on highly anticipated productions. Earlier this month, she signed a contract with Luail, Ireland’s National Dance Company, where she will tour around Ireland with the show “Nōs”. The show will be staged at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre in Dublin in January, and at the Belfast International Arts Festival among other stages across the country. Nōs is a triple bill exploring “transformation, transcendence and togetherness,” by renowned and award-winning choreographers: Akram Khan, Oona Doherty and Liz Roche.
Amelia Hauer is an emerging talent and certainly an individual to keep an eye out for.
