DrAshley Taggart

Ashley Taggart works primarily in the field of contemporary drama and playwriting, with a special interest in the influence of science, new technologies and evolutionary theory. His early research focused on how evolutionary concepts were assimilated into later 19th and early 20th century theatre, concentrating on Strindberg, Maeterlinck and Beckett. Since then, he has worked in film, tv and radio drama. After several years as a television researcher, he published short stories, and received a London Production Fund development award for a 40-minute screenplay, Loving. A full-length play, Lauro, was staged at the Man in the Moon Theatre, Chelsea, followed by a 50-minute fiction film, The Way Ahead, set in the Northern Irish “Troubles”. He has published articles in Modern Drama, Modern Language Review, and made contributions to Contemporary Irish Theatre, The Theatre of Martin McDonagh and The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance.  In recent years, he has primarily worked as an writer /editor on screenplays and has had a consistent involvement with short film. Several of his films have bee screened in festivals (Cork Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival). This year, in collaboration with a neuroscientist he completed a book on the cross-currents between neuroscience and literature: The Enchanted Loom; and a documentary for TG4 on The Irish Woman Who Shot Mussolini.