Speak Up! Performance Skills for Writers with Siobhan Mac Mahon

Course Summary

A lively and enabling workshop promoting confidence in writers to read/perform their own work in public

There will be a one hour break for lunch.

Course Outline

The morning will be spent doing drama warm-ups and vocal exercises, giving you the skills and confidence to do justice to your words at a reading.

We will explore: Voice, body-language, ‘stage’ presence, microphone skills, eye contact and engagement with the audience.

The afternoon will be spent practicing your skills with your own piece/pieces of writing, culminating in a short reading/performance of your piece.

Bring along a piece/s of your own writing (Poetry, prose, memoir etc.) and come prepared to move!

Course Outcomes

You will leave feeling invigorated and inspired, with the skills and confidence to read your work in public and really bring it alive for your audience.

Siobhan Mac Mahon (MA Creative Writing UCD) is an award-winning poet who has been writing and performing her poetry for over twenty five years. She is an experienced and skilled facilitator, who has many years of creating and delivering writing and performance workshops in a wide range of communities and settings. Siobhan has collaborated extensively with other artists to create Spoken Word projects, combining poetry with music, dance and with film. She was the winner of WOMAD Festival poetry slam, The Ilkley Literature Open Mic. and the Sheffield, Off the Shelf Literature Festival Open Mic. She has been poet in residence for The International Permaculture Conference, London and for the Brigid of Faughart Festival, Dundalk.

Shortlisted for the Hennessey New Irish Writing Poetry award 2018, Siobhan has been published both online and in print, including in a Bloodaxe/ Raving Beauties Anthology – Hallelujah for 50 Foot Women and in the Irish Times. She has also been published in: Skylight 47, Artemis (Encuentro Internacional de Poetas) Eat the Storms, Washing Windows 4&5 and online by headstuff.org, The Perp walk, Margutte.com and many other sites.
Siobhan has received funding from the Arts Council England for her collaborative projects: The Mouth of the Cave and Voices of Women. She was the poet/performer in a multi-Artform project – Echoes of a Spiritual Nature at the left Bank Leeds. Her multi-lingual poetry film Forgotten Memory has been shown at the Cork Film Festival and at the Cyclops Film Festival, Ukraine.

Siobhán has run Speak Up! workshops with many writer’s groups in the UK and in Ireland. Siobhan has also worked freelance, as a writer, with community groups, with schools, with writer’s groups and with many arts organisations (Artworks Creative Communities, Kala Sangham, Artforms, Fabric, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Thomas Danby College, East Leeds FM radio, Creative Partnerships) Siobhan’s experience and training enables her to put participants at ease so that they can achieve their best potential. Much of the focus of her work has been delivering creative writing workshops to vulnerable groups.