Shane Dempsey is a working-class Irish director working in London and beyond. He is next working on the Dutch premiere of The Laramie Project in Amsterdam.
Training
Shane Dempsey trained at The National Theatre Studio and E15 Acting School.
Theatre For the National Theatre: Hamlet (as movement director);Translations (as staff director). Other productions include: My Future at Donmar Warehouse; We End Up Breathing Rust at The Mick Lalley Theatre for Druid; The Jungle Book at Kew Gardens; Shining City (as assistant director) at Theatre Royal Stratford East; rob steal swindle at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts; Continuity and The Non-Stop Connolly Show at the Finborough; About Last Night and Seven Jewish Children at the Arcola; The Master and Margarita at the Bussey Building and Te Pooka, Edinburgh; and The Bay at Theatre503, The Space and Te Pooka, Edinburgh.
Movement direction projects include: The Wife Of Michael Cleary by Maz O Connor; Hamlet, National Theatre; From Out The Land,Kickham Barracks, Ireland ; Migran-Te for Plataforma Festival in Sheffield, Halifax and Leeds; Eating Myself at Battersea Arts Centre and International Tour ; The Fight for Stagecraft at Kickham Barracks, Ireland; The Good Earth (R&D) at Wales Millenium Centre); Ensemble Practise in New York; and The Blocks and More Shadows Than People for E15 at Clifftown Theatre.
Shane Dempsey founded Stagecraft – one of Ireland’s leading youth theatres – and ran the organisation from 1998 to 2016. He is also the founding member of Fragments, a dynamic physical ensemble in London working across theatre and film. Internationally he has led workshops in movement and ensemble practice in New York and devised large-scale theatre projects with young people in China. Shane is an experienced facilitator and regularly works with The National Theatre Learning department. He has led workshops in New York, Shanghai, Bangkok, Chengdu, Moscow and Beijing.
His work also includes a landmark digital film archive, Mothers Of Modern Ireland – A People's History.