Danielle Galligan is an Irish actress and theatre maker.
Early life and education
Galligan is from Rathfarnham, a suburb in South Dublin. Her mother, Lorraine is a beauty therapist who runs a salon and beauty school Galligan Beauty. Danielle was raised Catholic but now considers herself agnostic. Galligan was a member of Ann Kavanagh's Young People's Theatre from 2005 to 2011 and attended Loreto High School Beaufort. She was also awarded the Ena Burke bursary for the Betty Ann Norton Theatre School. She then studied Drama and Theatre studies at Trinity College Dublin and trained in Acting at The Lir Academy, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2015.
Career
Theatre
After graduating from The Lir, Galligan began her career in stage productions such as The Train with the Rough Magic Theatre Company and Hostel 16. For Hostel 16, Galligan had a FUEL theatre making residency and workshop alongside Fionnuala Gygax and Ailish Leavy at the Druid Theatre. In 2017, she was in All Honey and played the titular role in The Grimm Tale of Cinderella. Galligan played the lead opposite Tom Moran in his 2018 play Lyrics. She starred alongside Finbarr Doyle as Stash in James Elliott's short playSummertime, which featured at the 2018 Dublin Fringe Festivals, where she and Doyle were shortlisted for Best Duo for the judge's choice awards,, as well as the 2019 DroghedaArts Festival and Abbey Theatre's 2019 Young Curators Festival. She played Cinnamon in We Can’t Have Monkeys in the House in 2018 at the New Theatre and reprised role also at the 2019 Young Curators Festival. She featured as the singer in Gavin Kostick's 12 Christmas Poems that December. Galligan was the dramaturg for Aisling O'Mara's Nothing But A Toerag, which premiered in January 2019. Galligan participated in a podcast with RISE Productions in which Galligan, Gavin Kostick, Eanna Hardwicke, and Janet Moran performed a modern version of Homer's Odyssey written by Kostick in full. Galligan and Kostick, having been working on this project since 2017, then co-created and performed in Gym Swim Party, a choreography production inspired by Kostick's take on The Odyssey in association with O'Reilly Theatre. The production was featured in the 2019 Dublin Fringe Festival.
Chaos Factory
In 2018, Galligan co-founded Chaos Factory, an experimental theatre company alongside Fionnuala Gygax, Venetia Bowe, and Rachel Bergin. They debuted with a production titled Kiss Kiss Slap, which featured in the 2018 Dublin Fringe Festival. Their second project was MorphMe, which premiered in April 2019. Starting in 2019, Chaos Factory collaborated with The Corn Exchange on a workshop at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, County Wicklow.
Television and film
Galligan has featured in several award-winning short films, such as Strangers in the Park, Pernicio, Beautiful Youth, and Break Us. She won best actress at the Short+Sweet Film Festival in Sydney and best duo alongside Mark Lawrence at the for Strangers in the Park and helped co-write the 2017 romantic-comedy short. She has also received nominations from the Richard Harris Film Festival and the Underground Cinema Festival for her role in Pernicio. Galligan made her television debut in 2019 with guest roles in Game of Thrones and Krypton. She landed her first major television role as Nina Zenik in upcoming Netflix series Shadow and Bone, an adaptation of fantasy book seriesThe Grisha Trilogy and the Six of Crows Duology by Leigh Bardugo.
