Kelly Thornton Biography, Career, Age, Filmography, Twitter

Kelly Thornton Biography

Kelly Thornton was born on 13 April 1997. She is an Irish actress. She is best known for her role as Corrina Mallon in the 2015 RTÉ drama Clean Break and for her role as Emma in Life’s a Breeze (2013) for which she earned an IFTA nomination for best actress.

Kelly Thornton Actress Career

She made her screen debut in the 2013 Irish comedy film Life’s a Breeze. She also played the role of Emma, the main protagonist, alongside fellow Irish actors Pat Shortt and Fionnula Flanagan. The film was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Thornton earned an IFTA nomination for her role, as well as receiving the Bingham Ray New Talent Award at the 2013 Galway Film Fleadh.

Thornton made her Irish television debut in the late 213, featuring in the fourth series of the popular RTÉ Television drama Love/Hate, playing the part of Kellie in a single episode appearance. She got her biggest role to date in 2015, starring as Corrina Mallon in the four part RTÉ drama Clean Break. The series, directed by Gillies MacKinnon and Damien O’Donnell, told the story of Frank Mallon, Corrina’s father and a car dealer. Struggling to make ends meet, Frank kidnaps the family of his local bank manager and consequently finds himself involved with some notorious local criminals. A second series of the show has yet to be announced by RTÉ.

The same year, Thornton played the lead role of Molly in the Irish short film Battle. The film was written and directed by Megan K. Fox and told the story of a “teenager finding strength and happiness in music in the face of her battle with depression”.[citation needed] This film would later be the focus of an episode of Beyond the Lens in 2016.

Thornton gained further recognition for her part in the 2016 film Sing Street, playing the role of Ann Lawlor, older sister of the main protagonist Conor. Set in mid-1980s inner-city Dublin, Sing Street follows the story of Conor “Cosmo” Lawlor, a teenager who is forced to move schools, from a private fee-paying school to the infamous public school Synge Street CBS. Soon after his move, Cosmo meets local model Raphina, and decides to set up his own rock band after offering her a starring role in a music video for the yet-to-be-formed band.

The film was a critical success with a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 96% based on 172 reviews and also received a Golden Globes nomination for best picture (comedy or musical). Thornton featured in the music video for Don’t Mind Me by Irish alternative rock band Walking on Cars in October 2016.

Kelly Thornton Age

Kelly Thornton was born on 13 April 1997. She is 21 years old.

Kelly Thornton Sing Street

With the recession hitting people hard in Dublin during the 80s, Conor is moved from his private school to a tough inner-city alternative. As he tries to adjust to a new way of life, he decides to start his own band.

Initial release: 17 March 2016 (Republic of Ireland)
Director: John Carney
Box office: 13.6 million USD
Nominations: Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Kelly Thornton Photo

Kelly Thornton Filmography

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Kelly Thornton Awards and Nominations

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Kelly Thornton Interview

I was fortunate to be part of Nightwood Theatre’s New Groundswell Festival this year as my script Centurions was one of six plays selected from across the country for the first edition of the National Play Reading Series. There I worked with an on outstanding team led by Kelly Thornton, who was director/dramaturg of the Centurions workshop and reading. The experience was a whirlwind, a lot of fun, and very exciting.

As Canada’s national women’s theatre since 1979, Nightwood has launched the careers of many of the leading theatre artists in the country. The company has built a legacy of artistic excellence – advocating for gender equity in the arts, training emerging female talent and making a significant contribution to the canon of award winning Canadian plays written by women.

How, when, and why did the New Groundswell Festival come about?

The Groundswell Festival has been around since 1985 actually, but our first New Groundswell Festival was launched in 2011. In the 80s the Festival incorporated fully staged productions but over the years, and with limited resources, it evolved into a play-reading festival. When I became Artistic Director of Nightwood in 2001 I began to focus in on what the playwright needs, and I started a unit to give ongoing dramaturgy and to create a sense of community for the writers in process. When the Laidlaw Foundation shifted their priorities away from funding play development the theatre community lost a real supporter and over the course of the next three years this depletion in funding forced me to look at how we develop plays in general.

I began to reassess our history of play development at Nightwood and I looked at the initial years of the Festival with staged productions. Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet by Ann-Marie MacDonald was first staged in Groundswell for instance, at the Annex Theatre in Toronto. I realized that the play in development, at some point, needs to engage with its audience in a theatrical way. The music stand readings are wonderful and revealing no doubt but to leap from here to a full production can be dangerous for a playwright. I often say it takes five years to write a play and one night to kill it. This is cynical yes but it can also be very true. In what is often a ruthless environment of media criticism, the first reviews can make or break any future for the work. I began to ask myself how could we fortify the work before its world premiere? How can we also inspire more interest in the work across the country?

In 2010 we received a grant from the Metcalf Foundation to fully investigate these ideas and The New Groundswell Festival was born. I have spent the last three years building on the festival. I still think it is imperative to offer the unplugged music stand readings and I have been extremely proud of the work I have brought to Toronto in the National Play-Reading Series in Groundswell. It brings focus to the work of writers from other regions and exposes Toronto audiences to the brilliance of work they may have no other chance to know. These readings balanced with the staged productions and panels make for a bevy of activity and keep the festival-goers engaged throughout the entire festival.

Who are your partners – individuals and/or companies – in the Festival?

Partnerships in the festival change every year. I spend a lot of time reaching out across the country to get ADs to come see the work. Sadly it is still a challenge as we are regionally isolated with such an expansive country as Canada. But the partners I have had thus far include both local and national companies. We have presented work by Zuppa Theatre (Halifax), Odelah Creations (Montreal), In Good Company (Halifax), as well as locals companies including Neighborhood Arts Network, Alameda Theatre, lady parts theatre, and Culchahworks Arts Collective.

What is the mission of the Festival?

The New Groundswell Festival is a forum for female artists from across Canada to meet, network and be given a national stage to showcase and disseminate their work while it is in development. Our main objective is to fortify the work and to create an opportunity for Canadian Theatres and the Arts Managers that lead them, to be exposed to the artistry of more female practitioners in order to influence their long-term programmatic choices.

What’s next for New Groundswell?

We are still in the process of confirming everything at the moment but suffice to say we will be doing the National Play-Reading Series again as well as at least two productions. I am excited to announce it soon!

Where do you hope the New Groundswell Festival will be in five years?

There is still work to be done to enhance the festival’s national profile and attract colleagues from across the country to come see the work. This year’s festival was very busy and we drew large crowds for most events as well as many local Artistic Directors and Literary Managers. In five years I hope the festival has a full playbill of workshop productions and national presentations (lets say 4-6), a healthy array of partnerships with theatres across Canada, and a growing audience with an appetite for new work.

What are you most proud of that the New Groundswell Festival has achieved?

Well, anecdotally speaking, I think I am most proud of our first festival where we gave one of our Write from the Hip emerging playwrights, Jordi Mand, a workshop production of her new play Between the Sheets. It was a rigorous process with loads of rewrites as well as a post workshop draft, all of which landed Jordi her inaugural mainstage production as a playwright the very next season. That play has gone on to multiple productions both nationally and internationally. For me it really serves as an example of the value in fortifying the work before it reaches the mainstage, which is what I feel the New Groundswell Festival does best.

What advice would you give to others who might be interested in starting up their own festival?

Create a three-year plan. Talk to your colleagues in the industry and to the artists and assess their needs. Try and make a festival that responds to something. A great motivator was to conceive of ways to improve how we produce and disseminate our work and how can we get better at that. The idea for The New Groundswell was born from our strategic planning sessions of 2010 and thinking about the big picture and the long term has allowed us to create metrics to measure our success as well as constructive ways to assess what isn’t working. It has allowed for continued growth while reminding us of what we still have on our wish list.

What would you like Women’s Caucus Members to take away from this article?

That all are welcome to submit their work to the National Play Reading Series as well as for consideration for the national presentations on our festival main-stage.

Source: http://www.nightwoodtheatre.net