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Pan Pan was founded in 1993 in Dublin and has toured its work internationally to major venues such as BAM, the Lincoln Centre, the Barbican, and NCPA Beijing, as well as Sydney and Melbourne Festivals. The company has received numerous national and international awards, including the Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Since inception, Pan Pan has produced 59 works with 112 partners, playing at 162 venues and 66 festivals worldwide. Its vision is to create new ways for audiences to experience performance and scenography, while supporting and challenging artists through collaboration and risk-taking.

The company’s work combines original writing with innovative interpretations of existing texts, blending artistic disciplines to question theatre’s conventions. Pan Pan presents in diverse formats and spaces—from traditional theatres to site-specific and outdoor settings— making their work accessible and engaging for varied audiences.

Pan Pan maintains strong international networks, believing that collaboration benefits artists and enriches Irish audiences when these experiences return home.

Gavin Quinn is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Pan Pan, Ireland’s longest-established contemporary theatre company. Pan Pan has toured extensively across Europe, the USA, and Asia with formally adventurous and critically acclaimed work that interrogates the boundaries of theatre and performance. Recent work includes Exit, Pursued by a Bear; an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale – told from the perspective of the Bear at DTF 2024; HISTORY PLAY - featuring a cast of ten eminent Historians performing live each night, DTF 2023; The Sudden at Dublin Dance Festival 2023, where the lines between dance, dance theatre and performance art blur – “Like trying to nail meaning to a Jackson Pollock, to confine the richness, ingenuity, artistry and imagination of The Sudden to a given is to miss the point entirely.”– The Arts Review. The First Bad Man, a performative book club based on the novel by Miranda July, at the National Theatre Studios London, Lincoln Center at Under the Radar NYC and Rising Festival, Naarm/Melbourne.

Other credits include; Brave New World, The Tempest & NŌ NŌ NŌ, Theater Bonn; The Seagull and Other Birds at NCAP Beijing and Abrons NYC 2014; Embers and All That Fall by Samuel Beckett, BAM, Lincoln Center; The Crumb Trail by Gina Moxley, PS 122 NYC; Oedipus Loves You by Simon Doyle & Gavin Quinn, PS 122 NYC, HAU Berlin.

Quinn was a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grantee in 2007 and won the Herald Angel Award at Edinburgh International Festival 2013.

The engagement of the mentor is aimed to pose challenges and interrogate the early-stage ideas for contemporary performance within a supportive structure. Engagement with Gavin Quinn will take place online and in Sydney over four sessions between October and January 2026.

As well as group meetings at the start and end of the programme, each participant will have time to discuss their project ideas individually with Gavin four times for about two hours each time. Meetings will take place online and, where possible, at the Esme Timbery Creative Practces Lab at ���������¼�. Each participant will be given the option of access to a dedicated workspace at ���������¼� for up to three days over the mentorship period where available.

The bursary is for contemporary theatre and performance makers to buy time to work on an idea in its early development stages, outside of the pressures of production. We are also partnering with Sydney Festival to offer each participant tickets to see a range of international and local performance. The Mentees and Gavin will have tickets to see a selection of shows at the 2026 Sydney Festical across the final week of the program, (January 19-25). 

A final informal sharing of the ideas and the mentorship process will happen at a day-long public symposium event in the Esme Timbery CPL on Saturday January 24th 2026, where the mentees will informally share their ideas and processes alongside Gavin Quinn and invited guests from Australia and Ireland. There will also be an industry networking event cohosted by Gavin and a leading industry expert from Australia.

• We welcome applications from people at any stage of their creative career who have been the lead artist (director, writer, or collaborative artist) of at least one full live performance outside a student context.
• Applicants must be based in Sydney. 
• Applicants must commit to setting aside dedicated time for mentorship and be available for both online and in-person sessions. 
• Collaborative pairs or groups may apply, but the bursary will be shared between them. 
• We are interested in performance ideas that are contemporary, formally ambitious, curious, non-traditional, and artistically compelling. Projects should be in early development with no fixed production date.

���������¼� and Pan Pan welcome and encourages applications from candidates coming from a diversity of national, ethnic or cultural groups (including, but not limited to First Nations, CALD, refugees, people with disabilities, LGBTQI+ artists and artists who are parents).

The project idea should be in its early stages of development, without an upcoming definite date for production. In our experience, projects that are more advanced in their development have less freedom to benefit from the input and challenges posed by the mentor over the duration of the mentorship.

Please submit the following via the application:

• A completed application form (questions below). 
• A CV or bio (no more than two pages). 
• Links to documentation of past work (video/images). Writers may include a short extract of text for performance (no full scripts please).

Application Questions:

1. What is the idea you would like to work on for the Mentorship? (max 300 words) 
2. What development or research have you done so far on the idea? (max 150 words) 
3. How do you make work? Describe your usual creative process. (max 300 words) 
4. What international or Australian work have you seen recently that has impacted you? (max 150 words)

• EOIs open — Friday 28 August 2025 
• EOIs close — Sunday 29 September 2025 
• Mentees confirmed — Friday 10 October 2025 
• First group session & 1:1s (online) — Week of 20 October 2025 
• Second 1:1s (online) — Week of 15 December 2025 
• Third 1:1s (online) — Week of 5 January 2026 
• Final week in Sydney (Fourth 1:1s in person) — 19–23 January 2026 
• Symposium Day — Saturday 24 January 2026

NB – dates are subject to some change, but any changes will be done in collaboration with the selected participants.

For accessibility issues with reading and writing, we recommend installing 'Helperbird'- a Chrome extension that provides: dyslexia fonts, text to speech with natural voices, OCR, dyslexia support, dictation, overlays, dyslexia rulers, an immersive reader, word prediction, Reader mode, and more to tailor the web to your needs.

If you find any aspect of this application inaccessible, please contact SAM’s Artistic Coordinator at h.gillies@unsw.edu.au and we will work with you to support your application.

Up to twelve projects will be shortlisted from the submitted applications by Pan Pan’s Producer Emma Coen and SAM Artistic Coordinator Harriet Gillies in close collaboration with Gavin Quinn, who will select the final five mentees. Depending on the applications received, we may contact participants by phone to discuss their projects before we make final decisions. We plan to communicate the decisions by Friday 10 October 2025.