Meet our MFA Theatre Producing Students
Meet our 2026 MFA in Theatre Producing students!
Our MFA Theatre producing students come from a variety of backgrounds, including stage management, directing, acting, playwriting and more! These eight students will be collaborating with our MFA Theatre Directing and Stage Design students on our upcoming Gradfest, producing four shows as a culmination of an intensive year of hands-on training.
In the second year of this programme, the MFA in Theatre Producing equips students of exceptional talent with the skills necessary to pursue a career in professional theatre and related industries through the development of skills, professional practices and creative approaches to theatre producing.
Applications for 2026-2027 are now open until May 31st, learn more about the programme here.
Abigail Palmer
Abby trained in Stage Management at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (BA Hons) and has worked for eight years on West End and large-scale productions. Her Assistant Stage Manager credits include & Juliet UK and Ireland tour (director Luke Sheppard), The Years (director Eline Arbo), Juno and the Paycock (director Matthew Warchus), Guys and Dolls (director Nicholas Hytner), The Ocean at the End of the Lane, UK & Ireland tour (director Katy Rudd), Mamma Mia! The Party (director Stacey Haynes), Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (director Jonathan Butterell) and Les Miserables (director Trevor Nunn and John Caird).
Abby is looking forward to drawing on her commercial theatre experience to produce ambitious, innovative, and original work.
Aisling Whelan
Aisling Whelan is an MFA producing student from Wexford, now based in Dublin. She completed her BA in Music, Film and Drama at University College Dublin in 2024. During her undergraduate studies, she produced a number of shows with the drama society and is pursuing a career as a professional producer.
Anna Buchmueller
Anna is a Dublin-based, New York-born creative producer and director. She holds a BA in Theater and American Studies from Wesleyan University, where she was recognised with High Honors for her direction of Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning. She also studied as an advanced director at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Theater Institute.
In the United States, Anna has worked with several theatre companies, including Colt Coeur, Keen Company, and Ojai Playwrights Conference. In Dublin, she has produced the sold-out runs of RESIN by Robert Downes [Scene + Heard Festival, 2024] and I Want to Speak to Your Manager (How I was Radicalised and Became…Karen) by Holly Hughes [Dublin Fringe Festival, 2025]. She has also production managed The Long Way Home and Orson Welles’ Christmas Carol for AboutFACE Theatre Company.
Caleb Chew
CALEB CHEW is an actor, director, teacher, and writer from Boston, Massachusetts who has a passion for energising and bringing new audiences to theatre spaces, and collaborating with fellow artists who value kindness and levity. He’s been fortunate to receive training from the University of Vermont (BA in Theatre) as well as the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco.
Recent favorite credits include: Waitress (The Majestic Theatre), Assassins (Lyric Stage Co. of Boston), Hand to God by Robert Askins (Royall Tyler Theatre), and Into the Woods (produced in educational setting). When he’s not in a green room, Caleb enjoys working as a special education teacher, coaching football, and playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Charlotte Donkers
Charlotte is an emerging theatre producer, with a particular focus on theatre for young audiences. Prior to beginning her studies in Dublin, Charlotte worked across theatre, film, and visual arts in a range of producing and management roles, including theatre and film festival producing, FOH and location management, and producing visual arts and international guest programmes.
She completed two bachelors in Art History and in Media & Culture Sciences from Utrecht University. Her screen producing work includes Some Kind of Company, produced as part of Floris Laus’ graduation project at HKU.
Sasha Pereira
Sasha Pereira is an MFA Theatre Producing student from France, with a background in fashion, photography, and videography. His work focuses on telling bold, honest stories with the goal of inspiring change and sparking a conversation. With a strong passion for musical theatre, Sasha believes in creating performances that feel alive and reflect the world around us.
Recent theatre credits include DysHopeIA (director, Maurice Rondeau High School), Sex: The Musical (writer/director), and 365 jours (writer). His film work includes the short film TOO FAR AWAY, which he wrote and directed.
Sawyer Estes
Sawyer is a theatre director, playwright, and producer currently based in Dublin. Originally from the United States, he has worked extensively for the past decade primarily through the theatre company, Vernal & Sere Theatre, which he co-founded in 2016. Estes functioned as the Artistic Director for the ensemble-based company which quickly established itself as a leading experimental theatre in the American Southeast with its eleven productions in a span of eight years.
His play Hurricane Season received its Off-Broadway premiere in 2024 at Theatre Row in New York City. This production from Vernal & Sere Theatre, which he both wrote and directed, was the subject of a profile in American Theatre Magazine. Other important credits include his original adaptations and stagings of Anne Carson’s The Glass Essay, Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, and Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi.
Sawyer holds a BFA from the University of Houston where he was mentored by Edward Albee.
William Burke
William is a playwright, curator, and director based in Brooklyn. His productions include the food was terrible (The Bushwick Starr), Is it Supposed to Last? (PlayCo), Help Me Draw Your Feelings? (The Brick), PIONEERS! #goforth (JACK), COMFORT DOGS: Live from the Pink House (JACK), FURRY! (JACK), FURRY!/LA FURIA! (The Bushwick Starr), Untitled American Flag Craft Project (The Brick), and Variations on The Main (JACK). With Target Margin Theater, his work includes I Made a Mistake, EXPLODITY!, and DAY!Night?fuck... (JACK and The Staller Center at Stony Brook University).
His plays have been developed or presented at NACL, New York Theatre Workshop, The Black Swan Lab at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, All For One, The Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place (Little Theatre), The Prelude Festival at CUNY Graduate Center, and CATCH.
As a director, William has collaborated with artists including Modesto “Flako” Jimenez, Haruna Lee, Maya Lawson, Brian Lawlor, and many others. Most recently, he directed a collection of work for Performing Arts Hub Norway at La MaMa. He studied playwriting at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman, Anne Washburn, and Erin Courtney.
William is the Head Curator of The Starr Reading Series at The Bushwick Starr, Co-Chair of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab alongside Jackie Sibblies Drury, and was Co-Curator of Little Theatre at Dixon Place (2017–2019). He has taught at Cornish College of the Arts, Primary Stages and Stony Brook University. His podcast series, Pep Talks for a New World, is available on all major platforms.