The year is 1980. A former movie actor, Ronald Reagan, whose great-grandfather was an emigrant from the village of Ballyporeen in County Tipperary, is the newly-elected, 40th president of the United States. That same year another emigrant, Ciarán O’Reilly from County Cavan, was performing in an off-Broadway play called Summer by the Irish writer HughRead more..
At a special event this February, the National Library of Ireland (N.L.I.) celebrated the official arrival of a first draft manuscript of Sean O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock. The manuscript, bought at auction, differs greatly from the published version of the play and contains handwritten drafts of Acts I and II, a list of characters,Read more..
It is likely that no other theatre in the English-speaking world is more identified with an individual playwright, and owes more to that playwright, than the Abbey Theatre does to Sean O’Casey (1880-1964). The Abbey’s productions of three O’Casey plays, The Shadow of Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and theRead more..