Fizz & Chips are excited to be working on a new outdoor project for young audiences with the support of the Riverbank Arts Centre and The Arts Council Commissions Award. Alongside our founding members, Martha (Director), Lindsey (Assistant Director) and Orlaith (Performer), we are delighted to be working with an incredible group of talented creatives, who have joined the Fizz & Chips family to develop 'Never Mind the Weather'.
LA Feeney - Performer
LA began learning his performing arts craft at 4 years old with Croine Flaherty School of Speech and Drama (RIAM) and then moving on to Maureen V. Ward’s Talented Kids, the Lir National Junior Academy, the Mill Youth Theatre Company and private one-to-one lessons with Tony Finnegan, Festival Productions. LA is currently in his final year studying performing arts on an Ad Astra Scholarship in UCD.
In musical theatre LA has been fortunate to play leading roles in the National Concert Hall (Festival Productions - “Bugsy Malone” and “Oliver!”), the Belfast Grand Opera House (Belfast School of Performing Arts - “Les Miserables”), the Avonmore Musical Society (“Oliver!”) and Youth Music Theatre, UK, “Dirty Stop Outs” (various roles) and performed on the West End stage in their “Young Performers Showcase”.
On TV LA was a regular presenter on RTE’s Children’s TV, plus acting roles in BBC’s “Ripper Street”, “Miss Mogul” (Tailored Films). In 2017 he won the Richard Harris International Film Festival One Minute Monologue Competition.
LA is a passionate hip-hop dancer having completed a scholarship with the Millennium Dance Complex, Los Angeles (2016) and since then, individually and with the Fly Dance Company, Dublin, has successfully performed and competed nationally/internationally including UK Street Dance Champions (2017, 2018), All Ireland Hip-hop Champions (2017, 2019), Irish Hip-hop Champions (2017, 2019) and Dancers Paradise World Champions, Mexico (2019).
Niamh McGowan - Movement Director
Niamh is a Dublin based actor and movement director with an MA in Theatre Practice from the Gaiety School of Acting. Training in voice and various styles of dance from a young age, she has performed in an extensive number of plays and musicals, both amateur and professional, over the past 15 years, most recently as ‘Sarah’ in Our House. Niamh began directing and choreographing theatre while studying at UCD and has continued to develop the craft of movement direction ever since!
Some direction/choreography credits include: UCD’s Intervarsity piece Newsies, Curtains the musical, Company the musical and Broken (an original piece). She has also just set up a new Irish theatre group called Entr’acte with the hope of producing fun, diverse and innovative theatre with young Irish professionals.
Niamh is very excited to work with the Fizz & Chips team and cannot wait to get stuck in head first into Never Mind The Weather.
Ellen Finnerty - Designer
Ellen is a costume designer and theatre-maker from County Tipperary. She recently graduated from Trinity College Dublin where she studied English Literature. Having finished her notably bookish degree, she is happy to have some time to work with her hands. She has spent this pandemic era hollowing out a space in her home-house to make objects with little or no use. She is happy to be collaborating again on 'Never Mind the Weather'. Though she likes Springtime Weather, when it’s warm out in the sun but cold in the shade, she thinks her favourite is October Weather when the air is cold but the light is warm.
Catherine Walsh - Movement & Design Assistant
Catherine started doing ballet when she was 5 years old in Co. Galway, where she grew up.
She was accepted to the prestigious Perm State Ballet School, Russia in her teens but decided to further her ballet training in London where she received a BA Hons in Theatre Dance from London Studio Centre. During her final year she was offered a job and began touring the UK with Vienna Festival Ballet, performing with them for 3 seasons and dancing classics such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty and Coppelia. New York was calling so she moved there in 2016. She toured all over America with Ballets with a Twist a ballet company based in Tribeca, New York. She performed with Cyndi Lauper in her Home for the Holidays Shows at the Beacon Theatre, New York. She danced with the Brooklyn Ballet in The Nutcracker at the famous Kings Theatre, New York. She has worked for contemporary ballet company ALTHEA, with whom she danced at Peridance Center, New York and at Prelude Projects Art Gallery, New York.
Alongside her professional ballet career, she has worked as a teacher in The Ballet Institute, New York and Regina Rogers School of Ballet, Galway, cultivating talent and inspiring people of all ages and abilities.
Niall Clarke - Sound Designer
Niall Clarke is a sound designer and mixer based in Galway city, who has worked on sound for both the stage and screen.
His work for the screen includes location and post audio production on a mixture of children's television shows, documentaries, and short films, many of which have been broadcast nationally, or have been screened at film festivals such as the Galway Film Fleadh and New York Film Festival.
In terms of theatre, he has been a sound designer/operator of a number of locally produced shows and has worked with companies such as Fíbín Teo and Fregoli theatre. This is his first time to work with Fizz and Chips.
Some of his more recent work includes recording, editing, and mixing a series of radio plays scheduled for broadcast on Raidió na Gaeltachta, recording the location sound for 'Off the Bench', a documentary about the Covid-19 pandemic and medical device sector in Galway city, and sound design for 'Fiach', a drive in theatre show in the Irish language.
Orla Tubridy - Producer
Orla is a theatre-maker, performer and cultural producer. She has a degree in French & English Literature from NUIG and an MA in Arts & Cultural Management from King’s College London.
Orla has worked across the arts and festival sectors in Ireland and the UK both as a performer and behind the scenes with companies such as Cheek by Jowl, Chekhov Training and Performance Ireland, Galway Theatre Festival, Galway International Arts Festival, Macnas, Branar, Cúisle Productions, Aoife’s Clown Doctors, and Baboro International Arts Festival for Children.
She first collaborated with Fizz & Chips on their show for young audiences ‘An Lasairéan’ and is delighted to be back for 'Never Mind the Weather'.