The Early Days of the Irish National Theatre

Abstract

Some account of the beginnings of the Irish national theatre movement, together with intimate portraits of its founders, is here given by P. J. Kelly, an actor now playing in Dark Rosaleen .¹ Mr Kelly lived with the great Irish dramatic movement in its early and struggling days; he knew intimately the men and women who founded it — John Millington Synge, William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore, Edward Martyn and others — and his recollections of these people and their work are of peculiar interest. When the representatives of the Irish National Theatre came to this country some years ago as the Irish Players, they had already begun to cater in considerable degree to the popular taste in their selection of plays, and of this trend, and of those responsible for it, Mr Kelly here speaks frankly and openly.

New York Times , 1 June 1919, section 4, pp. 2–3.