MIICHEÁL MAC LIAMMÓIR (1947-74)

Actor, scenic designer and playwright whose more than 300 productions in Gaelic and English at the Gate Theatre in Dublin enriched the Irish Renaissance by introducing non-Irish playwrights to the generally parochial Irish theatre.

Using the stage name Alfrend Willmore he made his debut on the London stage in 1911 playing Oliver Twist; he later played John Darling in Peter Pan.

He travelled and studied art throughout Europe and on his return to Ireland founded (1928) with the English producer Hilton Edwards, the Gate Theatre. Their policy of presenting a mainly international repertory while also encouraging Irish playwrights to write plays less local in subject matter than those produced at the Abbey Theatre, enabled Irish audiences to become familiar with the plays of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Chekhov, O´Neill and Arthur Miller and at the same time called attention to such new Irish dramatists as Denis Johnston and T.C. Murray.

Also with Edwards he organized the Galway Theatre (Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe) in 1928 and acted as its director from 1928 to 1931. There Mac Liammóir´s Diarmuid agus Gráinne (1928), a verse play version, in Gaelic, of a Celtic legend, was first produced.

Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s Mac Liammóir periodically toured as actor, producer and director of a repertory company thar appeared in such diverse locations as Cairo, Athens and the major cities of Canada.

Mac Liammóir also played Iago in orson Welles´s film version of Othello (1955). He developed and performed several one-man shows including The Importance of Being Oscar (1960) based on readings from Oscar Wilde and Talking About Yeats (1970) centred on the writings of William Butler Yeats.