Grace Collender

Grace Collender is an actor/writer/dancer. As an actor, she debuted during her final year of her undergraduate degree in TU Dublin Conservatoire when she was cast as the lead role of Kate in Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls at the Abbey Theatre, and on its National Tour. During this time, she also filmed Imagine for the BBC. Since graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Acting in November of 2019, she has subsequently gone on to star as Nina Scully in Thomas Kilroy’s The Big Chapel, adapted for theatre by John Morton (Dead Still, Two Cats) in conjunction with the Abbey Theatre and Asylum Productions and as Helena in Drama at Inish in the Abbey Theatre, directed by comedy specialist Cal McCrystal (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Paddington, One Man, Two Guvnors). In 2020, she filmed Inherent for Screen Ireland and just prior to this, the short Non-Essential, a one-woman piece funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which she self-produced in isolation. Grace originated the role of Cara in the US Tour of Find Your Way Home, which also ran off-Broadway. In 2019, she was part of the development and workshopping Roderick Ford’s Ob Gob as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, in association with Triskel Arts Centre, Project Arts Centre and Asylum Productions. Her undergraduate essay concerning the work of Caryl Churchill won the prestigious Regional Global Undergraduate Award 2019, and was published in The Undergraduate Journal. Grace is a 2021 Resident Dance Artist at Shawbrook Dance Trust and was awarded a Carlow Wedge Funds Micro-Bursary from Carlow Arts Festival and a Professional Development Award from the Arts Council for the development of her debut full length play, ANNEX, which was also a top ten finalist for the Strollers Network Propel Programme. In 2022, she worked on Abbey Calling for The Abbey Theatre, and her two-minute play, I BLINK, which she wrote and performed was commissioned and produced by Tinderbox Theatre Company. Grace’s tiny play, The New Friday, was one of ten shortlisted and published plays by Fishamble: The New Play Company as part of their Tiny Plays for a Brighter Future initiative in partnership with the ESB, and has been selected for the Junior Certificate English Syllabus 2022 – 2025, resulting in its nationwide publication. Grace performed her one woman play, It Was All For Nothing, at Scripts Playwriting Festival 2021, directed by Alan King. She just finished workshopping the Mick Flannery’s new actor musician musical, Evening Train, directed by West End director Séimí Campbell, in which she played the lead role of Grace and was the company pianist.