Costume Designer

Joan O'Clery

The Bartered Bride

Biography

Joan O’Clery is a costume designer working in both stage and screen. For Irish National Opera, she designed costumes for productions of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (2019) and Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s The Second Violinist. Her screen work includes the feature films King of the Travellers, Swansong, Dating Amber (all IFTA nominated for best costume design), Out of Innocence, The Delinquent Season, Rose Plays Julie , I, Dolores, The Trial Of The Century and The Voting Age. Joan costumed the RTÉ TV series Finding Joy Seasons 1 and 2 and the recent TV drama Kin. She is a three-time winner of the Irish Times Irish Theatre Award, and her designs for opera include Verdi’s La traviata (English National Opera). She has originated the costumes for several world premieres by major Irish writers including Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Marina Carr and Frank McGuinness. Her costumes are regularly seen at the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre and many stages around Ireland. Highlights of her stage costuming include Macbeth (Globe Theatre and RSC), An Enemy of the People (Gate Theatre), DruidMurphy Trilogy of Tom Murphy plays (Druid Theatre Company), She Stoops to Conquer (Abbey Theatre), and Medicine, Woyzeck in Winter and The Approach (Landmark Productions).

November 2025