Margaretta D'Arcy

Last updated

Margaretta D'Arcy
Born14 June 1934
London, England
Known forActivism, acting, writing,
SpouseJohn Arden
HonoursAosdana member

Margaretta Ruth D'Arcy (born 14 June 1934, [1] London) is an Irish actress, writer, playwright, and activist. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

D'Arcy has been a member of the Irish association of artists, known as Aosdána, since its inauguration and is known for addressing Irish nationalism, civil liberties, and women's rights in her work. [3] [4]

In 2014, she was imprisoned for trespassing on a runway during protests over United States military stopovers at Shannon Airport.

Family and theatrical life

She was born in London to a Russian-Jewish mother and an Irish-Catholic father. [2] D'Arcy worked in small theatres in Dublin from the age of fifteen and later became an actress. [6]

She was married in 1957 to English playwright and author John Arden, and they frequently collaborated. [7] They settled in Galway and established the Galway Theatre Workshop in 1976. The couple had five sons, one of whom predeceased his mother. [6]

The couple wrote a number of stage pieces and improvisational works for amateur and student players, including The Happy Haven (1960) and The Workhouse Donkey. She has written and produced many plays, including The Non-Stop Connolly Show. [3]

D'Arcy has also written a number of books, including Tell Them Everything, Awkward Corners (with John Arden), and Galway's Pirate Women: A Global Trawl. [8]

Activism

As an activist, in 1961, D'Arcy joined the anti-nuclear Committee of 100, led by Bertrand Russell. [3] In 1981 her peace-activism resulted in her incarceration in Armagh Jail, after defacing a wall at the Ulster Museum. Her book Tell Them Everything tells the story of her time during the Armagh and H-Block dirty protests and was one of the earliest accounts about the Armagh women, their Republicanism and imprisonment. [9]

D'Arcy also directed Yellow Gate Women, a film about the attempts by women of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp to outwit the British and United States Military at RAF Greenham Common with bolt cutters and legal challenges. [10] Challenging censorship since 1987, she ran a women's kitchen pirate-radio from her home in Galway. [3]

In 2011, D'Arcy refused to stand for a minute's silence to honour a PSNI officer Ronan Kerr, killed by dissident republicans, at an Aosdana meeting. Her actions were deliberate, she told the media afterwards, which attracted fierce criticism of her perceived support for armed republican groups in Northern Ireland. [11]

Along with Niall Farrell, she was arrested in October 2012 for scaling the perimeter fence of Shannon Airport, in protest at the use of the airport as a stopover for US military flights. She was given a suspended 12-week sentence, but was imprisoned in 2014 after refusing to sign a bond saying that she wouldn't trespass on non-public parts of Shannon Airport. [12] She was released after serving nine and a half weeks of the sentence. [12]

Affiliations

Works

Books

Her books include; [8] [13]

Plays

Her plays include; [13]

Plays devised as group productions include; [13]

Plays written in collaboration with John Arden include; [13]

Films

Films as a director and those produced by Women in Media & Entertainment; [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edna O'Brien</span> Irish writer (1930–2024)

Josephine Edna O'Brien was an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gort</span> Town in County Galway, Ireland

Gort is a town of around 2,800 inhabitants in County Galway in the west of Ireland. Located near the border with County Clare, the town lies between the Burren and the Slieve Aughty and is served by the R458 and R460 regional roads, which connect to the M18 motorway.

Events in the year 1971 in Ireland.

Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright, screenwriter and director of stage and film. In recognition of his contribution to world theatre, McPherson was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature in June 2013 by University College Dublin.

"The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce. It is by far the longest story in the collection and, at 15,952 words, is almost long enough to be described as a novella. The story deals with themes of love and loss, as well as raising questions about the nature of the Irish identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siobhán McKenna</span> Irish actress (1922–1986)

Siobhán McKenna was an Irish stage and screen actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marina Carr</span> Irish playwright (born 1964)

Marina Carr is an Irish playwright, known for By the Bog of Cats (1998).

Thomas F. Kilroy was an Irish playwright and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Keegan</span> Irish writer (born 1968)

Claire Keegan is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Arden (director)</span> Welsh film director and actress (1927–1982)

Jane Arden was a British film director, actress, singer/songwriter and poet, who gained note in the 1950s. Born in Pontypool, Monmouthshire, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She started acting in the late 1940s and writing for stage and television in the 1950s. In the 1960s, she joined movements for feminism and anti-psychiatry. She wrote a screenplay for the film Separation (1967). In the late 1960s and 1970s, she wrote for experimental theatre, adapting one work as a self-directed film, The Other Side of the Underneath (1972). In 1978 she published a poetry book. Arden committed suicide in 1982. In 2009, her feature films Separation (1967), The Other Side of the Underneath (1972) and Anti-Clock (1979) were restored by the British Film Institute and released on DVD and Blu-ray. Her literary works are out of print.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enda Walsh</span> Irish playwright (born 1967)

Enda Walsh is an Irish playwright.

Ernest Gébler, sometimes credited as Ernie Gebler, was an Irish writer of Czech origin. He was a member of Aosdána.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Hardiman Library</span>

The James Hardiman Library serves the University of Galway in Ireland. It is a legal deposit or "copyright library", which means that publishers in the country must deposit a copy of all their publications there, free of charge. The James Hardiman Library is home to an extensive range of cultural artefacts, particularly relating to the history of theatre. This includes the largest digital theatre archive in the world, a joint project with The Abbey, Ireland's national theatre, to preserve material that institution has compiled since its foundation. Other theatre archives found at the James Hardiman Library include those of the Gate Theatre, An Taibhdhearc, the Lyric Theatre and the Druid Theatre Company. In addition, manuscripts collected by Douglas Hyde, the first President of Ireland, are deposited at the James Hardiman Library, as is a manuscript personally donated by James Joyce in 1932.

Mary O'Malley was an Irish theatre director and, with her husband Pearse, co-founder of Belfast's Lyric Players Theatre, now more usually known as the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aideen Barry</span> Irish visual artist

Aideen Barry is a contemporary visual artist from Cork, Ireland.

Maria Lamburn is a British composer and musician whose style uses large scale instrumental scores.

The Almost Free Theatre was an alternative and fringe theatre set up by American actor and social activist E. D. Berman in 1971 in Rupert Street, Soho, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Arden</span> British playwright (1930–2012)

John Arden was an English playwright who at his death was lauded as "one of the most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom de Paor</span> Irish architect (born 1967)

Tomás "Tom" de PaorFRIAI Int FRIBA is an Irish architect and member of Aosdána.

References

  1. "Margaretta D'Arcy". IMDb.
  2. 1 2 "Margaretta D'Arcy (born 1934)", searcs-web.com, archived from the original on 13 June 2011, retrieved 4 October 2010
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Filmmaker: Margaretta D'Arcy", reframecollection.org, archived from the original on 25 July 2011, retrieved 4 October 2010
  4. 1 2 "Margaretta D'Arcy postcard to Bernard McKenna", udel.edu, 1995, retrieved 4 October 2010
  5. "John Arden", 4-wall.com, retrieved 4 October 2010
  6. 1 2 (Bourke & Deane 2002 , p. 1287)
  7. "Interview with John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy by Raymond H. Thompson", rochester.edu, retrieved 4 October 2010
  8. 1 2 "Loose Theatre: Memoirs of a Guerrilla Theatre Activist", feministbook.blogspot.com, 3 June 2007, retrieved 4 October 2010
  9. ""Tell Them Everything": Three Women Artists and the Northern Irish Conflict". AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  10. "Yellow Gate Women", reframecollection.org, archived from the original on 25 July 2011, retrieved 4 October 2010
  11. Griffin, Sam (22 January 2014). "Margaretta D'Arcy a constant thorn in side of lawmakers". Irish Independent. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
  12. 1 2 Siggins, Lorna; Holland, Kitty (22 March 2014). "Activist Margaretta D'Arcy released from prison". The Irish Times. Retrieved 10 August 2024.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 "Margaretta D'Arcy", irishwriters-online.com, archived from the original on 4 October 2009, retrieved 4 October 2010
  14. "Interview with John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy | Robbins Library Digital Projects". d.lib.rochester.edu. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  15. Leach, Robert (1 January 2012). "A mighty bust-up: John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy's The Island of the Mighty at the Aldwych theatre, December 1972". Studies in Theatre and Performance. 32 (1): 3–14. doi:10.1386/stap.32.1.3_1. ISSN   1468-2761. S2CID   192189442.
  16. "Irish Documentary in New York Festival", filmireland.net, retrieved 4 October 2010

Further reading