Druid Theatre 1975-2025

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

Druid Theatre is Ireland’s leading theatre company. Since their origin in 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, the company has revitalised the Irish dramatic tradition by staging seminal new plays and by breathing life into neglected classics. This anthology celebrates that tradition by gathering together six key plays from Druid’s fifty-year history.

Featuring an exciting blend of established and unjustly forgotten playwrights this collection also provides insight into the company’s history. Edited by Barry Houlihan, Patrick Lonergan, and Máiréad Ní Chróinín, each play is accompanied by a short introduction and production images (many of them never published before) from Druid’s archive at the University of Galway. The plays include:

The Wood of the Whispering by MJ Molloy
Same Old Moon by Geraldine Aron
Conversations on a Homecoming by Tom Murphy
At the Black Pig’s Dyke by Vincent Woods
The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh
The Beacon by Nancy Harris

The selection of plays allows key themes from Druid’s 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. 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.

Barry Houlihan is Archivist at Hardiman Library, University of Galway, and has 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.

Máiréad Ní Chróinín is Druid Lecturer at University of Galway. She is also a practising theatre artists, and is co-director of Galway-based Moonfish Theatre.