Mae Leahy is a costume designer, primarily for stage.
Upcoming projects include Deaf Republic, a Dead Centre and Royal Court co-production, directed by Ben Kidd and Bush Moukarzel, to be performed this autumn at the Royal Court, London and Dublin Theatre Festival.
Mae has designed for companies such as Dead Centre, Four Rivers, Corn Exchange, ANU, Gift Horse and the National Youth Theatre at the Abbey Theatre. She has a particular interest in new writing and devised practices, implementing design in a production’s world-building from the very beginning of the process.
Recent design work includes Dead Centre’s Illness as Metaphor at DTF 2024 and subsequently at Viernulvier in Ghent, Belgium; The Misanthrope at the Lir Academy, directed by Eoghan Carrick; and Theatre for One 2025: Made in Cork for Landmark Productions.
Credits also include To Be A Machine (version 2.0), Good Sex (both Dead Centre); Don’t Copy Me with Gift Horse Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Theatre’s 30th anniversary; Theatre For One 2024 with Landmark Productions as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival; Like We Were Born To Move (National Youth Theatre on the Peacock stage, Abbey Theatre); Blue Thunder (Cathal Cleary & Kelly Phelan co-production); Isla, Happy Birthday Dear Alice, Blackbird and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Four Rivers); The Wandering Rocks (ANU); Dubliners (Corn Exchange 2022); Blister (Síofra O Mara & Sinead Gallagher); Tess, Twelfth Night and War and Peace (Gift Horse Theatre); and In Heat (Philomena Productions).
Mae also designed the 2024 Spraoi Parade in Waterford.
She was awarded an Arts Council bursary in 2021 for her exploration and interest in designer-led theatre practices.
She is a founding member of Gift Horse Theatre, a theatre company dedicated to making sustainable work with a focus on playful adaptations of classic texts.
Originally from Waterford, she is based in Dublin and is a graduate of Drama and Theatre Studies in Trinity College.
