The Dublin Shakespeare Society was founded in 1907 and is the oldest non-professional theatre company in Ireland. The society is dedicated primarily to promoting the works of William Shakespeare – the greatest playwright of them all.
Over more than a century of existence we can claim to have staged some of the best Shakespeare productions seen in the city, and our productions have been graced by a host of great names: Anew McMaster, Donal McCann, all the Byrnes – Gay, Al, Gabriel and Willie, Celia deFeine, Eilis Mullan, Gerard Stembridge – the list goes on.
The society in recent years has also presented the work of more modern playwrights, such as O’Casey, O’Neill, Friel, Fugard, Murphy, Wiliams and many others.
Most of our activities take place around our present home – T@36 – The Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square West.
In recent years we have run seasons of play and screenplay readings, with evenings as diverse as a performance of the verse plays of William Butler Yeats to a reading of the punk poems of John Cooper Clark.
We also occasionally run once-off readings: on 18 Jan we held a reading of ‘GOTHIC HORROR: The Dublin haunting of Lefcardio Hearn’ in association with the Ireland Japan Association’ and on 28 September we staged a performance of ‘letters of Love and Loss’ in Tankardstown House hotel in association with the Francis Ledwidge Society.
The last year has been extremely busy in terms of full scale productions. The major Shakespeare production was ‘Macbeth’ from 7 to 12 April which was complemented by ‘Seven Beckett Shorts’ from 24 to 28 September and ‘Kennedy’s Children’ by Robert Patrick from 5 to 7 November.
To commemorate the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas we are staging a performance of ‘Under Milk Wood’ in the Autumn and our Spring production will be ‘The Capulets and the Montagues’ a play by the renowned 16th century Spanish playwright Lope deVega based on the same sources as Shakespeare used for ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
As you can see Shakespeare is still alive and well in Dublin in this year of his 450th birthday. we hope you will join us to continue to celebrate his works into the future.
Paul Maher
President, Dublin Shakespeare Society
