2025
12th International Mentorship with Caden Manson
Broke House
International Mentorship 2025
Pan Pan is delighted to welcome Caden Manson of Big Art Group as a mentor for 2025 to work with up to four performance makers based in Ireland to develop early-stage ideas for contemporary performance projects.
This is a one-on-one mentorship programme in which each participant will have four mentorship sessions with Caden and each of the selected participants will receive a bursary to help them set aside dedicated time to work on their ideas. This year our participants are Rachel Enright Murphy, Barry Fitzgerald, Dualtagh McDonnell-Grundy, and Venus Patel
Later this year we will host an informal sharing of the ideas and the mentorship process will happen at a day-long public symposium event in Dublin.
The Pan Pan International Mentorship is funded by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council.
MEET THE MENTOR
Photo by Chris Taggart
Caden Manson is an artist, curator, and educator whose work radically questions the audience’s relationship to reality through performances that collide embodiment, media, and code. As co-founder of Big Art Group, their dense, fast, and multi-layered performances traverse theater, film, installation, and activism—employing disruption, slippage, and interference as artistic strategies.
Manson’s work has been presented in over 50 cities across 14 countries, including at La Biennale di Venezia Teatro, Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Hebbel am Ufer, Festival de Otoño, and The Kitchen in NYC. Their landmark productions include Flicker, House of No More, The People, and Broke House. Through their pioneering techniques, such as Real Time Film, Manson reconfigures bodies and space through live video/performance installations to challenge dominant narratives of identity, presence, and power. They are a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellow, Pew Fellow, and MacDowell Fellow, and their writing (in collaboration with Jemma Nelson) has been featured in PAJ, Theater Magazine, Theater der Zeit, and Theater Journal.
Manson’s recent works continue to explore the intersections of digital embodiment, surveillance, and queer futurity. Broke House was presented at La Biennale di Venezia Teatro, while The Render premiered at TSV – Teatro Nazionale. Their installation SOS/Realness Liberation Front was exhibited at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles, and their short film SOS/Animals/Action has been screening in Germany and Austria.
MEET THE MENTEES
Rachel Enright-Murphy is a visual artist whose work combines moving image, sound, performance and print with text. From these, she explores the ambiguities, errors and hierarchies of language - often creating intimate narratives from scientific texts and bureaucratic structures. She is an organizing member of Ormond Studios, an artist-run studio and exhibition space in Dublin.
Barry Fitzgerald is a queer maker, director and performer based between Ireland and the UK. Their interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of identity. Playing with form and connecting with communities is at its heart - experimental performance work that’s aesthetically rich, thought-provoking and fun. Barry is Associate Artist with OUTBOX and an Artist-in-Residence at VISUAL Carlow.
Dualtagh McDonnell-Grundy is theatre maker and writer. His current focus is exploring a de-anthropocentric approach to performance through the facilitation of encounters between plants and humans using interactive technology. He is a co-founding member of BLOB collective. Recent credits include presentations at Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, Uitnacht Festival and 4bid Gallery.
Venus Patel is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working in theatre, film, and visual arts. Her work deals with social conformity and Queer/POC suppression through the lens of absurdity and informed by her experiences as a trans woman of colour. Recently, she presented a live art/theatre show, Monsters, at Dublin Fringe Festival.