It was WIlliam Shakespeare who said that all the world's a stage.
For one of Ireland’s great playwrights, Sean O’Casey, that world and that stage comprised the tenements of his native Dublin.
There, in the overcrowded rooms that sheltered the poor, he found the stories of ordinary people living in extraordinary times and those stories became the fodder for his three great Dublin plays.
The Plough and the Stars, The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock are set during cataclysmic national events: the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War.
🎭 Join @SeanRadioRocks for a special @RTEArena at 6:30pm live from @thtgalway. Enjoy @DruidTheatre production of DruidO'Casey as part of @galwayintarts ✨ pic.twitter.com/vPx6Ob2cZa
— RTÉ Radio 1 (@RTERadio1) July 27, 2023
Some 100 years later, in Galway, the internationally acclaimed, Druid Theatre Company and its artistic director Garry Hynes had always had a passion to put on the three plays.
Now that dream has been realised as the company stage the trilogy of O’Casey works at the Galway International Arts Festival before embarking on a national tour.
RTÉ Arena travelled to Galway to meet the team behind the epic production - listen above.
Listen to more from RTÉ Arena here.
