Pride at Garter Lane is a two day celebration of art and queer joy, packed with workshops, talks, tea spilling, heart pouring and body moving.
Curated by Waterford’s Rachel Ní Bhraonáin, Natasha Everitt and Wayne Power, the creative weekend programme features a host of local and national LGBTQ+ artists, of different disciplines and genres, making their particular brand of creation accessible to both the general public and artists alike. Events include, but are not limited to, Conscious Dance, Zine Making, Spoken Word, Artist Networking and a Spilling the Tea Panel Talk, to top things off. Expect an engaging, interesting, exploratory and definitely fun two days, guided by the capable curators. Events take place on Friday the 30th of May and Sunday the 1st of June.
Conscious Dance Workshop with Live DJ
This conscious dance workshop will be led by Martina Acosta Rama with Gav Timlin on decks.
Conscious dance fuses dance and mindfulness to foster confidence in self expression through non prescriptive movement. In this two hour workshop Martina will lead you through some grounding exercises and physical warm ups, space exploration followed by a sober rave with music that builds the energy from low to high to low.
Let Me Be Perfectly Queer (Artists Talk)
Aoife Sweeney O’Connor a queer performer and maker – who will be fresh off of bringing their Fringe-tastic show An Evening With Wee Daniel to the Galway Theatre Festival – will be leading this fun filled non prescriptive workshop/talk. They will talk on sustainable and holistic art practice for LGBTQ+ artists, including how to package and assert yourself as a freelancer.
Zine Making Workshop
This zine making workshop will be led by visual artist Cúan Cusack. Using a plethora of recyclable materials, including old newspapers, magazines and paper based art works, the participants in this workshop will be led on how to make their own Zine. Fill it with a personal message, your own story or a random collection of things that make you feel good. This workshop is bound to get your inner child out as you draw, cut glue and stick until your glittery heart is content.
The Word’s Out (Spoken Word Event)
THE WORD’S OUT brings together bold, brilliant queer poets and performers who are rewriting the rules, reclaiming the mic, and celebrating the magic of LGBTQ+ expression. Expect raw truth, riotous laughter, tender moments, and electric energy—all under the fierce banner of Pride. Whether you’re spitting verses, snapping fingers, or soaking it all in—this is your space. Come loud. Come proud. Come as you are.
We’re Coming Out (Panel Presentations)
We’re Coming Out is an expression of joy and work for this host of presenting artists. We have gathered together some of Waterford’s finest LGBTQIA+ artists, each from different artistic backgrounds and disciplines. Each of these individuals will give a brief talk on who they are, what they do, and what they have coming up. It’s a great chance for artists within the queer community to get to know each other and start to build a professional network with each other.
Spilling The Tea (Café style talk Q&A)
Spilling the Tea: Making Art with a Queer Lens is a camp and chaotic conversation with The Cult of Rhys, Duo Devour and Sophie Hutchinson. We have gathered these gorge girls, gays and theys together to sip and spill the tea on what life is like for them as professional working queer artists. Each coming from different disciplines, and each having raucous and free spirited nature, this is going to be a talk like no other. Get your saucers at the ready as this is going to be a treat.
A huge thanks going out to Natasha, Rachel and Wayne who have worked so hard organising the series of events for Pride at Garter Lane Arts Centre.
Their information is detailed below.
Natasha Everitt
Natasha is an actor, theatre maker and writer.
She graduated in Theatre Studies and English Literature, from here she went on to train in short courses facilitated by Louis Lovett, Rough Magic and Eddie Kay.
She produces her own original multidisciplinary pieces that blend art, theatre, dance and film, and has created new works for Imagine Arts Festival, the Alternative Kilkenny Arts Festival, and Culture Night in Waterford to name but a few.
Natasha has won the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ in the Green Room Awards for her role as Feste Shakespeare Squared’s Arts Council funded production of Twelfth Night and has recently been given a four star review in The Irish Times for her performance with Gare St. Lazare in the Dublin Theatre Festival.
Natasha is also a member of the queer arts collective Alien:Nation who put on club nights in Waterford. These club nights are queer centric and focus on fostering multi disciplinary art nights with a focus on queer performers, djs and creating a sense of community.
Rachel Ní Bhraonáin
Rachel is an artist making multidisciplinary shows and short films from her hometown of Waterford. With storytelling at its core, her work combines dance, writing and sometimes aerial, to create vivid and emotionally honest work.
Rachel works regularly as a dance teacher and a movement director for theatre. She has directed, choreographed and collaborated on a number of shows presented in Ireland and the UK, including most recently MOSH, Losing Your Body, Clarity and Glimmer.
Rachel’s interdisciplinary approach comes from her varied background as a performer on stage, on screen and on the sides of buildings – she has worked with Scarabeus Aerial Theatre (UK), Sunday’s Child Theatre (IRL/UK), Fidget Feet (IRL), Spraoi International Street Arts Festival (IRL), Joy Alpuerto Ritter, and Polly Bennett amongst others. Her short films have been screened at numerous festivals including GAZE International, IndieCork and InShadow, Lisbon.
In 2025, MOSH is on an Arts Council funded national tour and Rachel is the Dance Artist in Residence at Garter Lane Arts Centre for a third year, where she focuses on engaging local dancers and cultivating professional dance in Waterford City. www.rachelnibhraonain.com
Wayne Power
Wayne is a writer, poet and spoken word artist based in Waterford city. In 2020 he released his debut poetry collection entitled ‘Everyone’s A Star After Midnight’
Playwright Jim Nolan described it as collection that “will speak for and to a lot of his generation”. Nolan subsequently launched Power’s follow up collection in 2021 , the gritty ‘Neon Hearts and The Angry Mob’.
He released his third collection ‘Only When I’m Dancing Can I Feel This Free‘ in October 2023 as part of the Waterford Writers Weekend. It was named as Best Book of 2023 by Liam Murphy of The Munster Express.
In 2023 , he was resident in Garter Lane’s A Little Room with debut play ‘Dress You Up’ It went to full production with Stagemad Theatre Company in October 2024 for 4 consecutive nights in Bank Lane, as part of the Imagine Arts festival, it played to over 200 people.
He has released six spoken word videos, his most recent, ‘A Place for Us’ was premiered by Hot Press magazine in November 2022. Directed by Cian Cusack, the piece was a rally cry for the queer community , written in response to the rise in hate crimes.
In October 2022, he founded the bi-monthly event ‘Slip of the Tongue’. This curated event fuses spoken word, poetry, live music, drag performance and comedy.
Niamh Fennessy – stage manager
Niamh is an actor and theatre maker based in Waterford. In 2023, she obtained a first-class honours BA in Theatre and Drama studies from the MTU Cork School of Music and has been working consistently both on and off stage since graduating. As a playwright and performer, Niamh’s play Glue debuted at the Cork Arts Theatre as part of the Catalyst programme in September 2023, produced by Four Faced Theatre Company. At home, Niamh was a recent resident in A Little Room Theatre Development Centre, and showcased a work in progress of her latest play, GUTS, which she wrote and directed.
Professional performance credits include ‘Rosalind’ in Unrehearsed Scenes From Shakespeare (Shakespeare Squared, 2024), ‘Girl’ in Glue (Dir. Alison McCormack, Four Faced Theatre Company, 2023), ‘Lisa’ in The Wonderful World of Dissocia (Dir. Ciarán Bermingham, The Stack Theatre, 2023), ‘Helena’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Dir. James Power, Stagemad, Lafcadio Hearne Japanese Gardens, 2022) and ‘Antonio’ in The Tempest (Dir. Johnny Hanrahan, The Stack Theatre, 2022). Backstage, Niamh was assistant director for Shakespeare Squared’s promenade performance of Twelfth Night in 2023 and has gained extensive stage management experience with companies such as Curious State, Red N Blue Theatre and OhScare Wilde Productions amongst others.
Niamh’s work as a theatre maker aims to investigate the form and importance of theatre in contemporary society and to produce work that is thought-provoking, visually rich and interesting. She has been exploring this in a variety of ways through stop motion animation, collage and sound design. She facilitates drama workshops weekly with Little Red Kettle and is currently working on a bi-lingual radio drama for children, titled ‘Faoi Sholas na Réaltaí/Concerning Starlight’
