orig. John Casey
born March 30, 1880, Dublin, Ire.
died Sept. 18, 1964, Torquay, Devon, Eng.
Irish playwright.
Born to a poor Protestant family, he educated himself and worked from age 14 at manual labour. He embraced the Irish nationalist cause, changed his name to its Irish form, and became active in the labour movement and its paramilitary Irish Citizen Army. By 1915 he had turned from politics to writing realistic tragicomedies about Dublin slum dwellers in war and revolution. The Abbey Theatre produced three of his earliest and best plays
The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926)
which caused riots by Irish patriots. When his antiwar play The Silver Tassie was rejected by the Abbey, O'Casey moved to England, where it was produced in 1929. His later plays include Red Roses for Me (1946); he also published a six-volume autobiography (193956).
O'Casey, photograph by J. Bown
Camera Press