actor
Film & Stage Career
Maria began acting in Ireland in 1999 but her first work professionally as an actor was with Shakespeare & Company, a Boston-based theatre company producing both Shakespeare and modern works, and she then moved on to star with the Irish company The Sugan Theatre Company in ‘Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off’ by Scottish playwrite Liz Lochead. In the late 1990’s she moved to Ireland and her first acting role was with Roger Corman’s Irish-based company Concorde Anois/New Horizons. She acted in several of Roger’s films in featured roles as well as Irish short films, feature films, music videos, and television commercials. Her stage debut came in the play “Eclipsed” in 2000 and she continued to perform on stage to Irish audience as with her multi-media company “extempo”, where she was director and co-producer, composing, arranging, and performing in the productions. Maria produced 3 shows in Galway under the ‘extempo’ umbrella at The Town Hall Theatre and site-specific venues. Maria also began collaborating with members of Poland’s Gardzienice Theatre Company in 1999 and continues to work with them both in Poland and London.
Maria founded the Bare Bards Theatre Co. in 1999, an improv and street theatre performance company, and gained a reputation in the West of Ireland as “innovative, wild, and highly entertaining” performance group that invaded the streets of towns all over the West coast during arts and cultural festivals, their slew of characters and scenarios ranging from filthy medieval street urchins to slightly remedial but sincere culchie cheerleaders from hell, and everything in between. Nothing was sacred and irreverence was the order of the day. Maria found an acting agent in Dublin in 2002, and was cast in speaking roles in films with actors such as Angela Lansbury, Patrick Bergin, Mia Farrow, Keith Carradine, and Patsy Kensit. Maria co-starred in Big Telly Theatre Co.’s (U.K.) production of “The Country Boy” on its 2-month international tour in 2007 and in 2008 she was snapped up to play murdered wife Isabella alongside British star Martin Shaw in the new BBC television series ‘Inspector George Gentley’ while also appearing in a cameo role as a cabaret singer in the ITV television series ‘Rock Rivals’.
2009 saw Maria as the leading lady in the original spoof short musical film ‘I Hate Musicals’ with legendary cult Irish singer Jack L and co-starring in ‘Roman Fever’, an Edith Wharton adaptation by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. Maria was invited to take a plum role in The Gate Theatre’s 2010 production of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ as the feisty, saucy courtesan Emelie and played alongside Nicolette Sheridan (‘Desperate Housewives’) in the Hallmark Channel’s ‘Honeymoon for One’. She recently played Canadian Ambassador Donna Welty in TV drama ‘Acceptable Risk’ for RTE/Canada TV. In 2011 fate decided to throw in a curve ball and Maria was approached by Irish comedy legends The Nualas to join them in re-launching the act in Ireland. From 2011 – 2018 she performed with them as performer, accompanist, co-writer, and musical director. Post Covid, Maria stars in the upcoming web-series ‘Rising’, directed by Laura Way produced by Pull The Trigger (Ireland), in UK singer Peter Andre’s film ‘Jafaican’, and writer/director Sean Garland’s film ‘Allotment’.
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