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WRITER
PROFILE Theo Dorgan interviews the well-known Irish playwright Tomas Kilroy. Since his first play in 1968, 'The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche', Kilroy has been hailed as one of the most significant playwrights of modern Ireland. His novel 'The Big Chapel' was short-listed for the Booker Prize. His plays have been marked by an inventive sense of theatricality, a willing to experiment and take chances on stage. He has a long association with the Abbey Theatre with plays like 'Talbot's Box' and his recent 'The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde'. In the interview Tom tells of the controversial reception given to 'Talbot's Box'. "Talbot's Box had some kind of effect outside the theatre. It certainly was controversial at the time but it did have this mixture of responses. On the one hand you had people from the Matt Talbot church coming in to the theatre and holding up rosary beads to the actor John Molloy, they seemed to think that the person they were seeing on stage really was Matt Talbot! You also had people who were very angry about the satire of power in the play and the connections between politicians and the church in the manipulation of a figure like Matt Talbot". During the interview, Kilroy explores his mixed feelings on his collaboration with Field Day, as well as his thoughts on the state of Irish theatre today. Biographical Details Born in Callan Co Kilkenny, in 1943. After graduating from UCD Thomas Kilroy taught in the States before becoming Professor of English. He served as play editor at the Abbey in1977 and was appointed director of Field Day in 1988. Over a couple of decades he has produced a number of plays (beginning by directing with the Field Day Company in Derry) including Tea, Sex and Shakespeare (about the writer as anti-hero, 1976); Talbot's Box (1977), about the life of a Dublin saint, Matt Talbot, (set against the working class ascetic), Double Cross (1986); a farce, Madam MacAdam's Travelling Theatre (1991) and versions of Chekhov's play, The Seagull and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (1996). A play focusing on the relationship between Oscar Wilde and his wife, The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (1997) ran at the Abbey Theatre in 1997 and 1998, to much critical acclaim. Kilroy has also published a number of academic essays and studies. In 1989 he resigned his professorship of English at UCG to concentrate fully on writing. He now divides his time between in Co Mayo and Maine. He is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, the Irish Academy of Letters and Aosdana. His début and most successful novel to date, The Big Chapel, an exploration of sectarian conflicts set in the 1800s, was short-listed for the 1971 Booker Prize. It went on to win the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1971 and the Heinemann Literary Prize in 1972. BUY VHS DIRECT FROM LOOPLINE Running Time: 30mins Year Made: 2001 Price: €20 - PAL (European), €30 - NTSC (US) plus P&P |
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Interview
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