Seeing a Corcadorca play at age 11 led me to pursue a career in theatre

The Carrigaline native tells Colette Sheridan about directing Girl in the Machine at Cork Arts Theatre

Éadaoin Fox, Director of Girl in the Machine

Tue, 03 Nov, 2026 - 21:30

Colette Sheridan

Theatre director Éadaoin Fox, who is directing Girl in the Machine at the Cork Arts Theatre, says she has been “chasing” the high she experienced when she saw a Corcadorca production for the first time.

Aged only 11, the Carrigaline native’s mother accompanied her to the old Southern Fruit warehouse in Cork City for a site-specific production of Eugene O’Neill’s play The Hairy Ape. Directed by Pat Kiernan, whom she describes as an “amazing director”, Fox was in no doubt that she wanted to pursue a career in theatre after seeing the play.

Now aged 29, Fox attended speech and drama classes growing up and became interested in the background machinations of theatre.

In her Leaving Cert year at Carrigaline Community School, she worked backstage on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Cork Midsummer Festival.

Fox’s parents don’t come from an artistic background. Her father is a retired financial adviser and her mother is a childminder. But they have always been supportive of their daughter’s pursuit of theatre.

Fox, who is based in Dublin, studied drama and philosophy at UCC and has a master’s in theatre directing from the Royal Holloway University of London.

Covid meant that Fox had to come home to Cork after her master’s as there were no opportunities in theatre at that time in London. She worked in an office in Cork for a while, all the time trying to develop her theatrical work. She directed a play, This is You, by Rosa Makela for the Cork Midsummer Festival and for the Dublin Fringe Festival.

Fox stayed in Cork for as long as she could but most of the work is in Dublin, although she was assistant director at the Everyman for The Glass Menagerie and was associate director on Making History.

“I’ve been really lucky for the last while, working as an assistant director in the Abbey last year. After that, I had a couple of jobs to keep me going. This year is going OK. I might have to get a job in January. That’s just the way it goes. I’m going to be working on A Whistle in the Dark at the National Theatre in London next year.”

Describing Girl in the Machine as a prescient play with its AI theme, Fox has set it in 2040.

“That seems quite far in the future. One of the characters, Owen, is a nurse and a patient on his ward dies. She was 140 years old. With bio-hacking becoming a massive thing and people like Elon Musk developing microchips to improve longevity, living until that age is not beyond the bounds of possibility.”

The play, written by Stef Smith, is about Owen and his partner Polly, who is a corporate lawyer.

“Owen is gifted a piece of virtual reality technology called a black box. Because Polly is quite a stressed person, Owen gives it to her to help her relax. It kind of has the same effect as heroin. Polly increasingly gets more addicted to this technology.

“You see the breakdown of the relationship because of what’s happening in the world outside.”

AI is very much part of the world, both now and in the time Fox presents the play. “I think the lack of regulation around AI is really frightening.” Fox avoids using it in her work. “I don’t need AI in anything I do. But it has such an effect on jobs. But doing anything creative, such as AI writing a script, would lack the human touch.”

All too aware of the struggle of working in the arts in this country, Fox thinks the Basic Income for the Arts is “a fantastic initiative”. She adds: “I didn’t get it but for friends who did, it has absolutely changed their lives. Freelancing is so uncertain.”

She is hopeful that the scheme will become available for all artists.

Fox says working in theatre is precarious. “Trying to navigate that and maintain a living, the administration of it can be very stressful. If you’re working full-time in a job just to make a living, it’s difficult to come home and try to put something together to get funding.”

Girl in the Machine is the third and final production of Cork Arts Theatre’s Re: Directing Programme 2026, a series of contemporary plays employing Cork directors funded by the Arts Council.

“It’s a brilliant initiative, organised by Fin Flynn (of Cork Arts Theatre) and the Arts Council, supporting directors making work in Cork with other local collaborators and artists.”