Ireland's OWN: History

 

Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) Dublin-born playwright O’Casey was the youngest of eight children of a Protestant clerk. In 1886, his father died and he became devoted to his mother. Sent to work at 14, he educated himself from his father’s books. He was a labourer for nine years on the Great Northern Railway and involved himself with the Nationalist movement as Secretary of the Gaelic League and a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. O’Casey became Secretary of the Women and Children’s Relief Fund during the Dublin general strike and Secretary of the Irish Citizen Army. His play The Shadow of a Gunman premiered in 1923 and three years after riots erupted at a performance of The Plough and the Stars over its realistic depiction of the Easter Rising and socialist disillusionment with Nationalism. At 46, O’Casey left Ireland and headed to London where he became an admired figure in fashionable society. In 1928 after the Abbey Theatre rejected The Silver Tassie. O’Casey decided to live in exile. The film of Juno and the Paycock, directed by Alfred Hitchcock was released in 1930 and a copy of the film was burned in a Limerick street by Nationalists. The Silver Tassie later finally opened at the Abbey in 1935 when O’Casey visited Dublin for the last time. *From Duff, L. "London’s Irish history," The Irish Post, 17 Nov. 2003 Page updated 31 Aug 2008 Ireland's OWN Logo by Eamann Website Design and Celtic Background by Míchealín Daugherty Copyright © 2008 Ireland's OWN All Rights Reserved.