Cameron Brady

Cameron Brady is a performer and theatre maker who merges movement and text into his work. He’s drawn to stories that depict how people interact in often unexplored contexts.

We met during a Michel Keegan Dolan week long instensive in Belfast at the beginning of this year where I was immediately drawn to his interest in marrying theatre and movement.

I’m always intriged as to how someone lands on their medium. So for Cameron, why theatre?

‘‘I got into it when I was 15, I think someone asked me if I was going to go to drama and I said no way. Then I thought about it for a day and signed up and we brought this play around to a few competitions and it did pretty well and I just thought well I’m doing this for the rest of my life. So then I applied to Trinity, got in and then now I’m here.’’

Even though he somewhat stumbled into it as a career choice, it immediately clicked for him that this was something that he wanted to do professionally. He’d gotten the lead in his first play and was consumed by how good it felt to do, which acted as the affirmation he needed to pursue this mad world of theatre. As he progressed he began to explore how it would feel to also take on the role of the ‘‘maker,’ and the stories he wished to tell.

‘‘For other peoples work it’s whatever stories they want to tell. I’m happy to do that and bring my abilities to that story. In my work I like to tell stories of human interactions in places that aren’t widely represented in theatre, the places you just wouldn’t really imagine. Not that you wouldn’t imagine it - everything’s been thought of. Just putting people in spaces where all of the preconceptions of other people need to disappear and you’re just at your most raw form of being human.’’

When I first met him, he was deep in the process of his latest piece ‘Heat,’ which takes place in a sauna and premiered at Scene and Heard Festival 2024 in Smock Alley Theatre. He’s a frequent sauna goer which led to him hatching an idea in his third year in college that he’d like to centre a show around it.

His fascination was driven by the fact that it’s a space you occupy with strangers, you need to trust in humanity, you’re basically naked in a place of vulnreability which made it really interesting to analyse. He let it burn for a few years and then envisioned the performers starting in the audience and stripping which proppeled the idea into a piece.

‘‘We went on quite a lot of rambly conceptual ideas, talking about the characters, where they came from and why they’re there. That went on for a couple weeks, here are there. Then I went up to Belfast where I met you, and I think that whole process taught me a lot about what I wanted to make and it really leant it more so into the realm of movement. There was no text in the show at the end but before I had gone to Belfast there was pages and pages of inner monologues that would be played.

After coming back I was thinking - why do we need all that? We don’t - we have twenty minutes to try and convey a story and to get across what’s going on so it all went out the window. We started doing loads of similar practices to Mr Keegan Dolan and then we just found movemnet that worked.’’

It’s so imperative to be able to gather the right team when diving into a process like this. He gathered people from college or previous projects as well as putting a call out on instagram saying - who wants to make a show? It was a really good way for him to gage who was interested in this idea and was willing to put time and effort into it. From there you can trust that they also have a passion to be part of the work. As the work can be so linked to whether the process was enjoyable, it’s crucial to find the right people.

‘‘That was something that I took from Belfast very much. It’s more so about the experience of making than the final product, not to say that the final product can’t be amazing or fantastic. When you are making something with a group of people and dedicating their time and your time to each other, the process is so much more important. That’s what I came back with - guys that’s enough haughty taughty crap, lets just get up and start moving! Existing in the fun of it.’’

But no matter what the process evolves into, there’s always still the surreal moment of when the audience is actually brought in. This will undoubtedly shift things as both a performer or a maker.

‘‘I think when I’m just acting it’s a whole lot of fun, it feels like crack in a way and that is why I started doing it. Why I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. It’s an unreal experience that you don’t really get anywhere else at all. Even with film acting it’s not the same, this tsunami wave of adrenaline.

When I’m making it, it’s very much not that. You’re still constantly watching as it’s going on, the work doesn’t stop. For ‘Heat,’ I was in it and directing it so I was directing until two seconds before I did it. It was great fun but there are times where I was like I just want to be an actor right now. I’m sure in different contexts where everyone is getting paid, the team is huge and working to make the show it’s a different story.’’

He went to a theatre festival in Amsterdam where he was instructed to see ‘Catch Jump Carry,’ which became an eteranal refernce point for him in terms of what a piece of theatre can be. It was five or six people running around, sweating but with the focus being on how they worked together. It allowed him to understand what he actually liked and that theatre can be ‘cool.’ Sparking him to then see how he could create a similar energy in ‘Heat.’

‘‘ I wanted to see how that could be achieved without a group of dancers. I’m not a crazy choreographer, I haven’t been dancing for too long so I think a part of me felt like a little bit of an intrusion making a dance piece straight away. So how can we get that level of exhaustion with people that aren’t dance inclined? With the nature of theatre we couldn’t get heat lamps but when it comes back there will be heat. The audience will feel it as well so there will be this whole experience of heat.

A fine line for the audience getting uncomfortable but I’m sure that a line will be drawn by a production person coming in and going no! So I’ll just take it to Europe and they’ll like it there.’’

The field as a youngmaker can be relentlessly terrifying and exciting no matter how good the proccess or project may end up being and it’s something we have to learn to exist alongside.

‘‘You never know whether it’s good until the first day, the first time an audience looks at it. That’s probably the most terrifying and exciting thing, that you can potentially be coming to a group of people with a pile of shite. But you’re kind of unaware of that. Even if you get people in there’s still an echochamber of people in the arts or drama, theatre or dance.

The fact that you can mess up and everything can just stop. The livness of it, the theatre, the whole point of it. If something does fuck up, fixing it, that’s the most gratifying, wonderful, crazy experience. And then just sort of putting yourself out there as whoever, whatever you think you are. Very exciting because I get to put the electricity that’s firing in my brain into this tangible form. But terrifying because you’re doing that to a bunch of people that you don’t know and it could get slammed and you have to deal with that.’’

But even with the neverending pit of praise that most artists and makers are riddled with, Cameron has found that the more negative feedback is what actually allowed things to come together for him.

‘‘It’s good when they tell you you’re shit though. The most formative feedback I’ve gotten was - that’s bad. We were rehearsing for a second year show and he looked at me and just said - nah I don’t believe you. I was shook because I thought I was class and there were loads of people in the room. It was a challenge and I think it’s really good for your brain. At the moment I was like damn it but after it was sort of the best thing.’’

We both agreed no matter what the feedback is, it’s more important that you and the team should be able to feel happy with the work and for that to be the true aim. Again this reinforces the idea of working with the right people and when it comes to dream collaboartors, he as well as most of the country would obviously love to be in a Teac Damsa show one day. But in terms of other goalposts the possibilities could be endless.

‘‘I don’t know the trajectory, the goal here is to act and act like a crazy bastard in movies and have a great time. But then for theatre I’ve no idea. I think a goal would probably be to eventually own a few buidings that could facilitate the creation of other people’s work in a really free context. Have really good spaces that people can hang out in and have a good time, as a theatre maker I think that would be the best thing. That’s what I find to be the most lacking. Free or cheap spaces that work can be made in with a theatre alongside and just put it on there. Have this constant cycle of creation as opposed to worrying about money to take people in, filling out grants cause you know half the people that make art aren’t grant orientated.’’

And finally the three starters to sum up his career for Notes for a Future Memoir….

Fun Beautiful Connected

Cameron Brady can be found on instagram @cameron_brady