Kilkenny’s Watergate Theatre have announced five recipients for their Gateway Bursary programme for 2026.
Continuing on a trend of supporting developing artists in Kilkenny city and county since their opening in 1993, the Watergate Theatre previously announced Kilkenny’s Devious Theatre as artists in residence for 2026-2028 and supported artists Anna Ni Dhúill, Susie Lamb, Joe Murphy, Gillian Grattan and John Morton.
Now, they’ve added five more names to their list for 2026, each of whom will receive some financial and facilities support to help develop their artistic practice, write, create or perform new works.
On the 2026 list of recipients are multi-disciplinary artist and director Sarah Joan K, who will develop a new piece of theatre designed with a youth-engagement strand, inspirary and informed by the Youth Theatre Ireland accredited Facilitation Training; Kilkenny native Jeffrey Gormley who works across theatre, dance and participation; performer, write and autisim and disability advocate Eleanor Walsh; actor and writer for stage and screen Kate Brosnan who will be developing a new piece with her theatre company, Bad Things Theatre; and Patrick McGlynn (aka Dr. Mindflip) who is currently working on a new album, presenting a series of live coding workshops as part of this year’s AKA Festival’s Artists In Motion programme, and creating bespoke synthesizer performance tools inspired by games, nature and aleatory music composition.
You can read more about the Gateway Bursasry recipients for 2026 here.
