Founded in 1975, Druid is a touring theatre company, anchored in the West of Ireland and looking to the world. Druid passionately believes that audiences have the right to see first-class professional theatre in their own communities. The company has toured the length and breadth of Ireland as well as touring internationally to the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Production highlights include: The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), in a co-production with The Royal Court Theatre, which went on to win four Tony Awards, including Best Director for Garry Hynes, the first woman to win an award for directing in the history of the Tony Awards; The Leenane Trilogy (1997), also with The Royal Court Theatre; DruidSynge (2005) – all six John Millington Synge plays in a single day; DruidMurphy – Plays by Tom Murphy (2011 & 2012), a trilogy of Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark and Famine; DruidShakespeare: Richard II, Henry IV (Pts. 1&2), Henry V in a new adaptation by Mark O’Rowe (2015) and DruidShakespeare: Richard III (2018); Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett which opened at Galway International Arts Festival in 2016 and by the end of 2018 had toured Ireland twice, played at the Abbey Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival, and several US cities. In 2020, in a first for Irish theatre, Druid’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, in a version by Tom Murphy, was broadcast live from Galway to 34 cinemas in Ireland and the UK.

The company continues to nurture playwrights and the next generation of theatre makers through its new writing and other artists support programmes. At the heart of its artistic programme is the Druid Ensemble who work closely with the Artistic Director and the Druid team to deliver a varied and ambitious body of work.

Garry Hynes founded Druid in 1975 and worked as its Artistic Director from 1975 to 1991, and from 1995 to date. From 1991 to 1994 she was the Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Garry has also worked with the Abbey and Gate Theatres (Ireland) and internationally with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court (U.K.), and with Atlantic Theater, New York City Center Encores!, Second Stage, Signature Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club in New York; and with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Awards include the Joe A. Callaway Award (New York) for Outstanding Directing for The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh (2009); Honorary Doctorates from the University of Dublin (2004), the National University of Ireland (1998) and the National Council for Education Awards (1988), and a Tony Award for Direction for The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1998). She is a recipient of many other theater awards, including The Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Award for Best Director and a Special Tribute Award for her contribution to Irish Theatre (2005).

Sean O’Casey was born on the north side of Dublin in 1880 and lived through troubled and turbulent times; the 1913 Lock-out and Strike, the 1916 Easter Rising, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War. Sean O’Casey was involved directly with the Lock-out and Strike, starving with his fellow workers, and like many other Dubliners, he saw and was affected by the horrors of the Rising and the troubles that followed.

When he was forty he wrote three plays within three years depicting the lives of the slum dwellers he was familiar with; Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. These plays now stand with the great plays of the Twentieth Century.

The most remarkable thing he had ever done, O’Casey later said, was to escape from the slums of Dublin. He managed to do this after his second play, Juno, was performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1924. Only then was he able to give up his job as a labourer working on the roads. These three plays made his name and he became known to an international audience.

In 1926 he travelled to London to receive the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and also give publicity for The Plough and the Stars. He decided to stay. During re-casting, he met and later married Eileen Carey. They moved to Devon in 1938 with his two sons Breon and Niall: a daughter, Shivaun, was born a year later. Niall tragically died of Leukaemia at age 21, and Sean O’Casey died eight years later, aged 84.