Although Dermot Healy (1947-2014) is probably best known as an
award-winning novelist and poet, he was also a prolific playwright,
screenwriter, and actor. Healy's interest in drama was long-standing,
and was central to his development as a writer. Between 1985 and 2010 he
wrote thirteen stage plays, including a critically-acclaimed adaptation
of García Lorca's
Blood Wedding
in 1989. All of these plays are published here for the first time. One
of the most striking features of Healy's dramatic works is their spirit
of community collaboration and their strong social conscience. His first
play,
Here and There
and
Going to America
(1985), was performed by members of the Sligo Dole Q Company; Metagama
(2004) was written for Theatre Hebrides on the Isle of Lewis;
Serious
(2005) was written in collaboration with (and performed by) prisoners
from Castlerea Prison;
A Night at the Disco
(2006) was written in collaboration with the teachers and students of
St Mary's Secondary School in Ballina. These community-based productions
were interspersed with more professional commissions, including Mr
Staines, performed by Pan Pan Theatre Company at the Samuel Beckett
Theatre in Dublin in 1999, and
Men to the Right
,
Women to the Left
, first performed at The Abbey Theatre in 2005 by the Clones Drama
Group.
Although the settings of Healy's plays are often local and regional by
design, their reach is always international and universal. With the
publication of this volume, Healy's contribution to drama seems certain
to flourish amongst practitioners and scholars alike, and
The Collected Plays
will be of great interest to all devotees of contemporary Irish theatre.
