They say biographies should be succinct and to the point. The best thing apparently, is to write the story of your life so that it feels like everything lead up to where you are right now. My life though has been a meander. I have and continue to bounce all over the map – from neuroscience to radio, education activism to music video, short stories to arts journalism. My autobiography is a story so convoluted I often have difficulty making sense of it myself. I realised recently that I haven’t tried writing it down for over a decade. Instead I’ve penned edited snippets for funding applications, trying to sound like someone who’s done one thing and well, always. Time to change that. As an aide-mémoire, I’ve pulled together everything I can remember doing from the mid 2000s on. It’s as chaotic and contradictory as this life has been. Its also a reminder to myself that many things have happened, and one or two been accomplished.

My ‘career’ began with undergrad in psychology. My course was an eclectic and brilliantly taught four year degree. We covered (so my fifteen year old CV tells me) 33 modules including Models of Development & Mental Health, Neurodevelopment & Aging, Advanced Personality, Neuroscience & Behaviour, and of course the dread Statistics. As a student I worked as a research assistant for several months in Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in 2006, studying learning and memory under Professor Shane O’Mara.

At college I became station manager, senior producer and community manager at Trinity FM.  It was at TFM I began to experiment with the mind altering new medium of podcasting. In 2005, with Jason McCandless and Frances Mcgillicuddy I created ‘Technolotics’, an internet comedy show about technology and politics. The show ran for 45 weekly episodes, taking a satirical look at emerging threats to civil liberties. In retrospect we were covering the beginning of the end of the open internet. Weekly topics included censorship, piracy, and a funky new website called Youtube.

At college I worked on the founding team of Bren McGuirk’s music magazine Analogue. As Online Editor I created the website and wrote articles, band interviews and feature pieces for our print edition. I got to interview idols like Stephen Merritt, Simple Kid and Seasick Steve. Analogue briefly went nationwide, and spawned a fantastic series of short music documentaries (although I can’t claim any credit for those).

Under the ever brilliant Andrew Booth, I contributed to the 2008 issue of the college satire magazine ‘Piranha!’. That year’s issue boiled a hotpot of controversy in the Irish press, and was officially ‘withdrawn from publication’. Andrew and I also collaborated on a blog of surreal reviews ‘Jackdaw Fool’, and the (even at the time) unpublishably outrageous comedic work ‘Hip Novel‘.

After graduating in 2008, I wrote my first scripted comedy. The podcast series ‘The Invisible Tour Guide’. Not knowing any actors at the time, I self recorded all the voices, teaching myself audio editing in the process. Somehow this, along with the experience of volunteering at the non-hierarchical community space Seomra Spraoi gave me the balls to try standup comedy. I went on to perform over 60 gigs at a variety of clubs including Aidan Bishop’s International Comedy Club, Andrew Stanley’s Mish Mash, The Capital Comedy Club, The Underground, The Neptune, Laugh Out Loud, Cork’s Craic House and Pat Shortt’s Pub.

Between 2009 and 2013 ​I volunteered as a co-ordinator at the consensus based arts centre Exchange Dublin, and served on the board of directors. Exchange was for those years, probably the most important part of my life. I mucked out with everything from volunteering on the door to helping to develop our legal structure. I organised workshops, held exhibitions and facilitated consensus based meetings. Tens of thousands of people visited Exchange each year, and we played host to well over a thousand events annually. It was a unique place, and I continue to seek out and promote its ethos. No one has written a definitive piece about that time, but the most useful and thought provoking I’ve found is by Robin Cafolla.

In 2010 I launched Marshmallow Ladyboy Jesus, an alternative literary and experimental comedy showcase. Each monthly show featured a variety of Ireland’s most talented and original writers and performers. Guests included Kevin Gildea (Father Ted), Shane Langan (Diet of Worms), Hugh Cooney (Don’t Like Mondays), Colm Keegan (Nighthawks), Kalle Ryan (Brownbread Mixtape), Coilín Oh-Aissieux (Narrative Arts Club), Roger Greg (Crazy Dog Audio Theatre Company), and David Turpin (My Life In Dresses). The show’s name, which today reads like a provocative volley in the culture wars, referenced 21st century Ireland passing a law prohibiting blasphemy.

2010 also saw me perform ‘Cheaper Than Therapy’, a series of ‘Moth style’ comic anecdotes of romantic disaster. Stories from Cheaper Than Therapy were featured at a variety of Dublin Storytelling events including Tongue Box, Scarleh Fer Yer Ma Fer Havin’ Ya, and Milk and Cookie Stories. A workshop performance stories from the show filled the upstairs in Twisted Pepper, as part of Body Tonic’s ‘Beatyards Comedy Festival‘ in October 2010.

I appeared as a guest on Damon Blake’s live panel show ‘Eat Cake’, and curated the storytelling room at the first ever Milk and Cookie Stories ‘After Dark’ event in the Clarendon Basement. I also lent my voice to the comedic radio soap opera ‘On The Line’, and the children’s radio series ‘The Urblin Chronicles’, both on Dublin City FM. It was there I met the Scottish super producer Heather MacLeod. With Heather’s help I started developing funded drama and documentaries under the Sound and Vision Scheme. The scheme offered a tiny percentage of the TV licence to fund independent radio productions. As Dead Medium I began to make shows for local and later national stations like Near FM, Dublin City FM, Newstalk and Lyric.

That year I also wrote articles and advice for the Irish adult magazine, Blue Ireland.

2011 meant compering a poetry & wrestling tournament for the Upstart Project; presenting the inaugural Digital Socket Awards, running the storytelling stage at Milk and Cookies After Dark 2, and giving an Ignite talk at Dublin’s Mindfield festival.

I created ‘The Emerald Arts‘ radio series with college friends Andrew Booth and John Hoysten.  A humourous homage to arts programmes of the 1970’s like BBC’s ‘Kaleidoscope’. The show aired on Near FM in Dublin. This was followed in 2012 by the ‘Dead Medium’ sketch comedy podcast, co-written and starring a number of young Irish comedians. During NaNoWriMo I wrote my second (only marginally less unpublishable) novel ‘The Wager’.

In 2012 along with Shane Connelly and Sebastian Dooris, I established Open Learning Ireland – a non-profit dedicated to providing free, non-hierarchical learning spaces in Dublin City. We organised a number of free learning events and weekend workshops. But ultimately couldn’t come close to achieving our dream of a more permanent open access learning space in Dublin city.

In 2013 I created two more radio comedy series. ‘Any Other Dublin’ a six part recession era comedy-drama for Dublin City FM. And Been There; Seen There, a sort of follow up to the Invisible Tour Guide, starring comedians Allison Spittle and Gordon Rochford. I also spent this year and the next training as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. Ultimately I would drop out for health reasons, perhaps one day I’ll give it another shot.

2014 saw the broadcast of Choices, a surreal six part comedy series for Dublin City FM based on my experience as a trainee psychotherapist. 

I followed up my first radio documentary, a six part series about Irish experimental music called ‘Mad Scientists of Music’. The show explored the extraordinary variety of Irish experimental music, from art music to chiptune, from circuit bending to geo-caching. It gave me the chance to interview a host of Irish experimental music greats from Ewan Hennelly to Ed Devane and Chipzel.

That year I returned to live radio, broadcasting three regular weekly radio series on Radiomade.ie, ‘Threat Detection’ and ‘Reading Plays’ both co-created with writer / director James Van DeWaal. With Andy Booth I created the weekly ‘Gareth Stack Show Live: Featuring Gareth Stack (with your host Andrew Booth)’ a weekly compendium of interviews with artists, comedians and makers. Radiomade, created by Jack Olohan and Dave Redmond, was a wonderful organisation, a sort of proto Dublin Digital radio, allowing dozens of community groups and hundreds of DJs and performers to make their own programmes in the heart of Dublin City.

2015 – 2016 I contributed a variety of arts reports for the RTE magazine show ‘Culture File’, including covering the Happy Days Samuel Becket festival in Enniskillen, and interviewing composers, writers, scientists and computer game developers. It during this time that I met future collaborators like the theatre maker Ciaran Taylor, whose Sightless Cinema audio drama initiative gives blind participants the opportunity to create their own radio plays and performances.

2016 saw my final comedy performance – a run of nights at the Free Edinburgh Fringe with the sketch comedy group ‘Tickled by Freaks‘. As well as my first staged play, ‘One Night Forever Ago‘, a two hander written for Joe O’Neill’s ‘New Irish Playbook’.

I wrote and directed easily my best work to date. The radio drama series ‘The Wall in the Mind‘. Inspired by a visit to the ruins of the old volkspolizei base in Brandenberg, the show was a murder mystery. Claire O’Hanlon, an Irish psychologist (played by Mia Gallagher and and Jasmin Gleeson), returns to the scene of her imprisonment in 1989, twenty five years after the disappearance of her first love.

2016 also saw the release of ‘The Wedding Tree‘, a one off drama for Newstalk starring James O’Connor, with engineering by Brendan Rehill.

Around 2016 I also began to work on music videos in earnest. Over the next few years I would create narrative videos for a variety of independent Irish artists, including Ama Millier, Aural Air, Powerful Creative Minds, David Turpin, Shy Mascot and Ray Brown.

In 2017 I returned to education, gaining a 1st Class Masters in Broadcast Production at IADT. I also created a radio documentary ‘The Free School’ for Newstalk, about the experimental school ‘Wicklow Sudbury’, which helped cement a long held interest in non-coercive education. James Van De Waal and myself collaborated once more, this time on a one off documentary for kids. Getting into the Game for Newstalk, mixed interviews and goofy humour to create a guide to getting to the video game industry. I also produced the radio series ‘The Bee Loud Glade Cabaret’ for Lyric, featuring the work of radio inspiration and all around genius Roger Gregg.

I also wrote, and this time also directed my second play ‘Mic Drop‘, a satire of inspirational business seminars starring Adam Tyrell. Adam and I would go on to turn the play into a one off radio drama for Phoenix FM.

In 2018 the psychologist Andrew P. Allen and I released the podcast series Psychology in Mind. I also created my first music video, ‘Pardon Me‘ for the band Shy Mascot. The video was an epic puppet odyssey through the streets of Dublin, with DOP Siobhan Madden, and special effects artist Frances Galligan, who would go on to lend her creative talents to any number of projects. I collaborated with Roger Gregg again, this time creating a documentary for Newstalk about his radio drama course, called ‘The Listening Stage‘.

After IADT I worked as a videographer and music video director, collaborating with local artists and businesses to tell their stories. Mostly I made small commercial documentaries for charities and local businesses. These included campaigns for housing charities, the Wicklow Sudbury school and work for Intertrust Technologies.

I directed and shot several music videos tin 2019 – 4 Lights for Shy Mascot, Non Je Ne Regrette Rien for Robot Dream, Romances for David Turpin (with DOP Siobhan Madden).

2020 saw me work with the rap outfit Powerful Creative Minds (featuring Jazzy) to create the music video Problems of These Days. With Shane Conneely I developed the DCC Arts funded cycling documentary series ‘Well Spun Tales’. I directed my best music video to date this year – the melancholic narrative ‘Now I See You‘ for Chris Wilson.

To pass the time in lockdown I teamed up with producer Paul Lynch to produce the film equipment review show ‘Hot Lunch‘ sponsored by Camerakit. And shot the short documentary ‘The Box‘ for Nicole O’Connor.

In 2021 I shot the 40 minute doc ‘Sonairte in Winter’, with Nicola Winters for the National Ecology Centre. As the pandemic dried up freelance videography, the wonderful old park side basement flat where I’d lived for many years was sold. I moved to Germany and took an in house job with Europe’s largest Coaching Company, Coachhub GmbH. At Coachhub I established the company’s in house coaching video platform, creating hundreds of unique ‘self improvement’ videos.

While living in Berlin, I created the podcast ‘Everybody Wants to Love You’ with my partner Nicole O’Connor. The show took an frank irreverent look at sex and relationships, exploring our own romantic lives past and present.

I also lensed the short film ‘Parvana‘ for Berlin based Afghan director Abbas Mohammad Ayyoubi.

In Berlin I connected with the German-American writer and painter Constantine Montana, and we began writing together. This time the focus was on short fiction, and I completed a number of short stories. This culminated in a reading of our ‘New Work’ at the wonderful writers cafe Laidak in Neukolln. I had the short story ‘Island State’, a psychedelic retelling of my first trip to NYC published in the magazine Cassandra Voices. 

Around this time I created the video ‘A Woman Alone’ for the Berlin based singer Mariama, and shot some interviews for Dr. Jürgen Schaflechner’s upcoming documentary film ‘The Specter of Populism‘.

Returning to Ireland in 2023, I went back to work as a videographer and camera operator; creating short form videos for the charity Goal Global, and gaining my first experience as an ENG camera operator for news channels Euronews and Al Jazeera. I also took on more AC / camera assistant gigs, working with the cinematographer Joesph Ingersol.

In 2013 I finally directed my first short with a budget. A wee fable about our relationship to technology, called ‘The Babysitter’, co-funded by myself and producer James Galvin. The film was created with a brilliant and mostly volunteer crew, and shot by Joesph Ingersol. As the film has some animated sequence it’s still (as of late 2024) in active post production.

I also shot the film ‘Death By Passive Aggressive Interpretive Dance‘ for the mad genius Dylan Delaney, which was selected as part of the Bloomsday Film Festival 2024.

2024 saw the completion of my first feature documentary, a film on the Sightless Cinema collective produced by Ciaran Taylor, currently in festival contention.

I shot for television news for the first time, creating reports for Euronews and Al Jazeera. I also taught the editing module of the full time film production course in Pulse College.

I began attending the inspiring monthly film collective ‘Fanvid’. Fanvid, along with the ‘Don’t Say Damn’ collective, exposed me to the latest crop of art and documentary film directors. Directors like Ruairi Bradley, Wictoria Weintritt, Frank Sweeny and Rioghnach Hardiman. In response I’ve made three short experimental films – Benediction, What is Lost Can Never Be Found, and Good Boys. I also wrote and directed a short during one of this years Kino D events, ‘We Saw You from Across the Bar‘.

Thanks to Fanvid I was able to organise a showing of films from some of the underground filmmakers I’d gotten to know in Berlin. 

This year I also published the story ‘Spreewasser’ in the American literary magazine Hobart. A short script of mine was a finalist in the Waterford Film Festival. One of my films was shown by Visual Artists Ireland. In December travelled to Tbilisi in Georgia to deliver a talk, and ended up making a short doc ‘The Quiet of Tbilisi’.

Updated 16 December, 2024.