Olwen Fouéré
Olwen Fouéré (born March 2, 1954) is an Irish actor, writer/director and creative artist. She was born on March 2, 1954, in Galway, Ireland to Breton parents Yann Fouéré and Marie-Magdeleine Mauger. She is one of Ireland’s most important contemporary theatre and performance artists. Her extensive practice navigates Theatre, Film, the Visual arts, Music, dance theatre and Literature including collaborations with writers such as Irish playwright Marina Carr and French writer Laurent Gaudé; visual artists James Coleman, Aurélien Froment and Jesse Jones; directors Steven Berkoff, John Crowley, Yael Farber, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Selina Cartmell and  Caitríona McLaughlin. She was a co-artistic director (with composer Roger Doyle) of the music and theatre company Operating Theatre (1980-2008) and in 2009, Fouéré founded TheEmergencyRoom dedicated to her own experimental work. She received international acclaim for her creation of riverrun (her adaptation and performance of the voice of the river in Finnegans Wake) and for her work as performer and artistic collaborator in Jesse Jones’s Tremble, Tremble which represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Notable film apprearances include This Must be the Place by Paolo Sorrentino, The Survivalist by Stephen Fingleton and Mandy by  Panos Cosmatos. Upcoming film releases include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) and The Northman by Robert Eggers. In 2020, Olwen was listed at number 22 on "The Irish Times" list of Ireland's greatest film actors. Theatre. Olwen Fouéré’s theatre history spans over four decades. She performs internationally in English and in French with theatres in Ireland, USA, France, UK, Australia and beyond including the Abbey Theatre, Gate Theatre, Royal National Theatre, Bouffes du Nord, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and St. Ann's Warehouse in New York and with the Sydney Theatre Company, Australia. In 1980, she  formed Operating Theatre, an avant-garde theatre company with composer Roger Doyle. In 2009, she established an artistic entity called TheEmergencyRoom for the development of her own projects including the internationally acclaimed riverrun (her adaptation of the voice of the river in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake) co-produced by Galway International Arts Festival and Cusack Projects Ltd; her staging of Lessness by Samuel Beckett (Barbican, Galway International Arts Festival and Project Arts Centre, Dublin); her translation and performances of Sodome, My Love by Laurent Gaudé (in association with Rough Magic) and her translation and production of Danse, Morob, written  for her by Laurent Gaudé. Visual Arts. Olwen Fouéré features in several works by artist James Coleman which continue to be shown internationally. Their first collaboration was the video installation “So Different and Yet” in 1980. She has also worked with artists Amanda Coogan and Andrew Duggan and on three collaborations with artist Aurelien Froment including Camillo’s idea (Venice Biennale 2013) and Apocalypse (Museum Leuven and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2017). Her ongoing collaborations with artist Jesse Jones began with Tremble, Tremble representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2017 which has since been installed in numerous venues  including the Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao in 2020. Honours. Olwen Fouéré was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Philosophy - Honoris Causa) from Dublin City University in April 2016 Publications. She has contributed to a number of publications on contemporary theatre and performance including: Documentary. A documentary of a year in her life, "Theatre in the Flesh" directed by Dara McCluskey, was produced for RTÉ's Arts Lives series in 2005.