Message of Welcome

A warm welcome to you, whatever part of the country, or indeed the ‘globe’ you may be in! You join us, Ireland’s oldest non-professional theatre company, on the eve of our centenary year, a year which we plan to make memorable with two major Shakespeare productions - watch this space!

There will also be readings, a trip to Stratford, a major lecture and an exhibition.

Most of this activity will be in and around T@36, the Teachers’ Club at 36 Parnell Square West, our newest home - earlier abodes were in Fitzwilliam and North Great George’s Street. Which reminds us not only of our vintage but of the great names who have graced our stages - Anew McMaster, Donal McCann, all the Byrnes - Gay, Gabriel, Willy, Celia de Freine, Eilis Mullan, Gerard Stembridge: the list goes on.

United as we are in our love of the Bard - and DSS can claim in its 100 years to have staged some of the best Shakespeare productions seen in Dublin – more recent years have seen creative involvement with the more modern canon - O’Neill, O’Casey, Friel, Fugard, Murphy, Williams - as well as a kind of rediscovery of the Greeks, of Ibsen, of the early Abbey writers. And that is one of our articles of faith, that the greatest plays resonate across the centuries, speaking to our hearts and minds with the unique truth of drama. None more so than William Shakespeare.

We hope you can join us, in whatever capacity - actor, activist or audience - in the course of 2007. As Leontes puts it in The Winter’s Tale, ‘Welcome hither /As is the spring to th’earth.’

Pat Burke, President, Dublin Shakespeare Society