Selected Plays

He was born in Omagh, County Tyrone, on January 9, 1929. He worked as a primary and preparatory school teacher in Derry between 1950 and 1960. During this period, he began writing short stories, which he published mainly in... New Yorker Magazine.
1958 is the year of the broadcast of his first radio plays, produced by BBC Belfast. In 1972 he became a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. In 1980 he founded, with Stephen Rea, the Field Day Theatre Company, from whose direction he would resign in January 1994.
In 1989, BBC Radio dedicated a season of six plays to him, the first time such an honor had been bestowed upon a living playwright. In 1991, Dancing in Lughnasa He won the Tony Award for Best Play of the Year. In 1994, he directed his first film. Molly Sweeney, an experience he would repeat again in 1997 with Give me your answer, do it..
In 1998, the film version of [the movie] was released. Dancing in Lughnasa, with a screenplay by Frank McGuinness, and directed by Pat O'Connor.