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Abbey Staff take to the stage
September 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of Sean O’Casey’s death. It’s not an unusual occurrence for the Abbey Theatre to stage an O’Casey play. However on 21 December 1973 roles were reversed when...
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Abbey staff on the roof
This photograph was taken in 1975 of the Abbey Theatre staff on the roof of the Abbey Theatre. Staff from all parts of the Theatre, from stage crew, accounts, stage management, graphic design,...
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The Sanctuary Lamp is lit
Tom Murphy’s 8th play at the Abbey Theatre, The Sanctuary Lamp was controversial in 1975 when the notion of waifs and strays convening in a church was at odds with the principles of 1970s Catholic...
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Poster for Jack Be Nimble
This poster for Jack Be Nimble highlights an early production by Patrick Mason in his Abbey career. Having previously worked at the Abbey as a Voice and Movement Coach this marks his directorial debut...
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Godfrey Quigley in Time Was
Godfrey Quigley played in over 40 productions at the Abbey Theatre between 1976 and 1990. Here we see Godfrey as P.J. in Time Was by Hugh Leonard, playing with Dearbhla Molloy as Beatrice and Kate...
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Mothers, a one woman show
Mothers, was a one woman show devised and performed by veteran Abbey Actress May Cluskey. It featured extracts from Yeats, O’Casey and Kavanagh. This poster for the show features a photo taken by...
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Talbot’s Box by Thomas Kilroy performed on the Peacock stage
Talbot’s Box was based on the life of Matt Talbot known as the workers’ saint who lived in Dublin from 1856-1925. John Molloy played Matt Talbot and Eileen Colgan played a priest figure (it would have...
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Stephen D and the tree of life
In this month of Bloomsday celebrations, we recall Stephen D by Hugh Leonard which was adapted from Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The play is set in Ireland at the end of the 19th...
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The premiere of Aristocrats
Aristocrats by Brian Friel first premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 1979, in a production directed by Joe Dowling, former Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre. On the occasion of the 2014 production...
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I do Not Like Thee, Dr. Fell
While Bernard Farrell can recall early family ventures to the Abbey at the Queen’s Theatre in the 1960’s, this photograph from I do Not Like Thee, Dr. Fell marks his first foray into playwriting. The...
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Hugh Leonard’s A Life
In Hugh Leonard’s memory play A Life, Drumm (Cyril Cusack) tries to take stock of his life. He visits two old friends, Lar and Mary Kearns but his mind drifts back to another evening, 40 years...
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Aristocrats in Belfast
Aristocrats premiered on the Abbey stage in 1979 and toured to Belfast later that year. This photograph was taken by Paul Moore, a technician for that touring production. It depicts the full creative...
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Eamon Kelly centenary
2014 marked the centenary of the birth of Eamon Kelly. Eamon performed in many Abbey Theatre productions such as Borstal Boy, The Playboy of the Western World and A Crucial week in the Life of a...
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Donal Mc Cann as Francis Hardy
Faith Healer by Brian Friel starring Donal Mc Cann as Francis Hardy, John Kavanagh as his Manager, Teddy and Kate Flynn as his wife Grace was an absolute tour de force when it premiered at the Abbey...
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Premiere of Canaries by Bernard Farrell
“Before any new play opens, the playwright prays that, somehow, all the subtleties within his/her work with be recognised, understood and brilliantly presented to the audience on Opening Night. It is...
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Mary Makebelieve, the musical
In 1982, Mary Makebelieve a musical by Fergus and Rosaleen Linehan with original score by Jim Doherty premiered on the Peacock stage. Mary Makebelieve based on James Stephens’ The Charwoman’s...
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The Gigli Concert premiere
This beautiful photo captures the essence of theatre; the three actors Kate O’Flynn, Godfrey Quigley, Tom Hickey supported by writer, Tom Murphy and director, Patrick Mason. The Gigli Concert is a...
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Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme
A scene from the 1994 production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme by Frank McGuinness, directed by Patrick Mason. This play premiered on the Peacock stage on 18th February 1985....
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Mamet at the Abbey
At a time when the housing boom is mooted in the newspapers again, we recall the first and only performance of Glengarry Glen Ross by great American playwright David Mamet. The play introduces four...
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Family Connections
The 1987 production of The Field by John B Keane featured members of the Olohan, Conway and Lawlor clans. This Flanagan ‘family’ portrait by Fergus Bourke includes Darragh Kelly, John Olohan, Rúaidhrí...
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Lady G
This photograph depicts Máire O’Neill as the indominitible Lady Gregory in Lady G , a one woman show by Carolyn Swift. The play created a portrait of Lady Gregory as playwright and co-founder of the...
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Bosco Hogan as W.B. Yeats
In this our 110th year we recall the inspirational founders of the Abbey Theatre. In this photograph from 1988 Bosco Hogan portrays W.B. Yeats in the one man show by Edward Callan I am of Ireland....
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A picture of 1990s Dublin
Blinded by the Light featuring Donal O’Kelly and Frank Kelly (both pictured) is set in a bed-sit in Dublin’s flat-land. When Mick opens the door to Mormon missionaries after a feed of magic mushrooms...
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Prayers of Sherkin by Sebastian Barry
Prayers of Sherkin was Sebastian Barry’s second play at the Abbey Theatre. A love story, it tells the story of Fanny, a young Quaker girl living in a dying religious community on Sherkin Island, West...
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The Mai by Marina Carr
In Marina Carr’s second play at the Abbey Theatre, Olwen Fouere played The Mai, a 40 year old woman struggling to save her marriage. The play features four generations of women from the one family....
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Portia Coughlan premiere
Portia Coughlan was Marina Carr’s fifth play at the Abbey Theatre. At once sinister and harrowingly moving, Portia Coughlan witnesses the struggle to reconcile all engulfing loss with life’s petty...
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Patrick Kavanagh’s Tarry Flynn is re-imagined
Tarry Flynn, the novel by Patrick Kavanagh has been described as the countryman’s Hamlet. Set in Cavan in the 1930s, it tells the story of Tarry, a farmer poet, and his quest for bog fields, young...
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Marina Carr’s Abbey stage premiere
Hester Swane is a woman scorned. Her husband Carthage has become a prosperous farmer and is leaving Hester to marry a respectable girl. Marina Carr’s play is the story of Medea re-imagined and...
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Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel
The Burial at Thebes, a translation of Sophocles’ Antigone by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney premiered on 5 April 2004. Recalling the experience of translating Antigone he wrote “Greek tragedy is as much...
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A non-stop Terminus tour
Dubliner Mark O’Rowe won the George Devine Award, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and an Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Award for Best New Play for Howie the Rookie in 1999. The Abbey Theatre’s...
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Happy Birthday Mr Yeats!
We recall the world premiere of An Appointment with Mr. Yeats in 2010. Since setting The Stolen Child to music on their classic Fisherman’s Blues album, Waterboys’ singer Mike Scott had been quietly...
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No Escape
The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse or the Ryan Report was published in May 2009. Almost a year later the Abbey Theatre presented The Darkest Corner Series featuring No Escape,...
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Pygmalion Poster
Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw was performed for the first time at the Abbey Theatre in 2011. Charlie Murphy starred in the role of Eliza Doolittle, an impoverished flower-girl who is taken in hand by...
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Panti’s Noble Call
Rory O’Neill aka Panti Bliss makes a post-show oration at the Abbey Theatre. The post Panti’s Noble Call appeared first on Abbey Theatre's 110th Anniversary.
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A Belfast homecoming for Quietly
The Abbey Theatre’s first performance of Owen McCafferty’s Quietly in the writer’s home town of Belfast was a momentous occasion. This extraordinary human play, about life in the aftermath of the Peace...
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President Higgins visits the Royal Shakespeare Company
President Higgins and Mrs. Higgins visited the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire on the final day of their State visit to the U.K. Fiach Mac Conghail, Director of the...
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The Mundy sisters dancing
A much loved scene from Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa sees the Mundy Sisters give themselves over to the music and dancing wildly about the kitchen. Lughnasa is harvest time and is named after...
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Twelfth Night Rehearsal Room
Some of Ireland’s most exciting theatre artists will bring a fresh and modern perspective to Shakespeare’s renowned comedy Twelfth Night directed by Wayne Jordan. This moment captures the energy of the...
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Performing Ireland exhibition at NUI Galway
Saileóg O’Halloran and Niamh Lunny from the Abbey Theatre’s costume department put the final touches to costumes in preparation for the launch of Performing Ireland 1904 to 2014 at NUI Galway.The...
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The Passing Day by George Shiels
George Shiels was a major playwright at the Abbey Theatre from 1921 to 1947. He had 23 plays premiered at the Abbey Theatre and yet he only saw one of them because he was confined to a wheel-chair...
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Designers of the future
The Yeats Design Residency is an innovative partnership between the Abbey Theatre and IT Sligo to help nurture the talents of young theatre designers in Ireland. Students were asked to create a model...
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Three Casimirs
Our 2014 production of Aristocrats directed by Patrick Mason, former Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre is in rehearsal at present. Actors Tom Hickey and John Kavanagh have played the role of...
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The world of props
Props play an integral role in any theatre production. They dress a set and bring to life the world the playwright imagined. Props inhabit the space the characters find themselves in and can help...
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Warming up for the satirical Heartbreak House
Actors Lisa Dwyer Hogg (playing the character of Ellie Dunn) and Nick Dunning (playing the character of Hector Hushabye) will star in the Abbey’s first ever production of Hearbreak House by Bernard...
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A performance under the stars on Heir Island
This moment captures a special outdoor performance of Maeve’s House on Heir Island as part of the West Cork Fit-Up Festival, the first time ever an event like such took place. On arriving at the venue...
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From Russia with Love
Did you know the Abbey Theatre toured to Leningrad and Moscow in the 1980s? When officials from Russia visited Dublin, they chose ‘The Field’ by John B. Keane and ‘The Great Hunger’ by Tom Mac Intyre...
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A look at the one-man show
The Abbey Theatre has had a long history of producing one-man shows and actor Eamon Morrissey has been an integral part of this history. Writers Flann O’Brien, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce and Maeve...
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Creating a space for playwrights
Here is Rebekka Duffy, our Yeats Design Assistant who re-designed the Peacock Bar to cater for 50 aspiring writers who took part in a writers salon with special guest playwrights including Owen Mc...
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The Waste Ground Party in the rehearsal room
Rehearsals are underway for The Waste Ground Party, a new play by Shaun Dunne. Here are the cast pictured on day one of rehearsals. The cast include: Louise Lewis (far left, front), Lloyd Cooney...
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110 Anniversary video
The post 110 Anniversary video appeared first on Abbey Theatre's 110th Anniversary.
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