Nicole Rourke is a freelance performer, writer and workshop facilitator. She trained in theatre and facilitation in the Middle East. She has written and performed several pieces for theatre/spoken word and her work has received critical acclaim at festivals in Dublin, London, Edinburgh, Israel, Poland, and Singapore. Most recently (2018) she has performed in Berlin and New York.
She is the recipient of an Arts Council Travel and Training Award, which enabled her to travel to Buenos Aires to research and write a series of Tango Monologues. The culmination of these, ‘Baggage’, was performed in a number of Irish venues in 2019, including the Civic Theatre.
Nicole is a highly experienced facilitator and has conducted a wide variety of workshops including Creative Writing and Storytelling at the Chester Beatty library, Drama and Creativity at the Gaiety School of Acting as well as Teambuilding Through Creativity for various organisations. She was a creative writing facilitator at the Irish Writers’ Centre from 2006-09, and was the resident Artist in the Community at St Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital in Dublin from 2010-2011.
In addition to her work as co-director of Big Smoke, she also designs and lectures on the Writing In The City seminar for students on Champlain College’s Study Abroad Dublin programme.