Druid Theatre 1975-2025: 50 Years of New Irish Plays

(Hardback)

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Description

Marking the 50th anniversary of one of the worlds leading theatre companies, this book collects six of its most impactful plays, together in one volume for the first time.

Druid Theatre is Irelands leading theatre company. Since 1975, they have surprised, delighted, and inspired audiences worldwide, touring from their home city of Galway in the west of Ireland to countless other locations nationally and internationally. Under the leadership of Garry Hynes, the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing (for Druids Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1998), the company has revitalised the Irish dramatic tradition by staging exciting new plays and by breathing life into neglected classics. This anthology, published to mark the companys fiftieth anniversary in 2025, celebrates that tradition by gathering six key plays from the companys history. Featuring an exciting blend of established, emerging, and unjustly forgotten playwrights, the book also provides fascinating information about the companys history, with each play being accompanied by a short essay that includes images (many of them never published before) from Druids archive at the University of Galway.

The selection of plays allows key themes from Druids history to be seen more clearly to allow readers to understand how the company has so fearlessly charted the boundaries between the realistic and the fantastic, the past and the present, and the individual and the wider society.
But it also presents six plays that are of huge value in their own right: these are original and daring dramas that have shaped and defined a half-century of Irish playwriting.

Author Bio

Barry Houlihan is Archivist at Hardiman Library, University of Galway with responsibility for the Druid Theatre Company archive. Barry has curated a number of exhibitions as well as authored and edited books and journals on Irish theatre history and archives.

Patrick Lonergan is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway and the author of many books on Irish drama and theatre.

Mirad N Chrinn Druid Lecturer at University of Galway. She is also a practising theatre artists, and is co-director of Galway-based Moonfish Theatre. www.maireadnichroinin.com