Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy (23 February 1935 – 15 May 2018) was an Irish dramatist who worked closely with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and with Druid Theatre, Galway. He was born in County Galway, Ireland and later lived in Dublin. Murphy's first successful play, A Whistle in the Dark, was performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London in 1961 and caused considerable controversy both there and in Dublin when it was later given its Irish premiere at the Abbey having initially been rejected by its artistic director. Life Murphy was born in Tuam, County Galway, the youngest of ten children. His elder siblings gradually emigrated to Birmingham until he was left alone with his mother. He played at centre half back for the Galway Vocational Schools Gaelic football team in the early 1950s. He attended Archbishop McHale College in Tuam, was an apprentice at the Tuam Sugar Factory and later became a metalwork teacher at Archbishop McHale College. He began writing in the late 1950s: "In 1958, my best friend said to me, why don't we write a play? I didn't think it was an unusual question, because in 1958 everyone in Ireland was writing a play". His second play, A Whistle in the Dark, was written in his Tuam kitchen on his free Friday and Saturday nights. It was entered into a competition for amateur plays, which it won, and was eventually produced in London in 1961, having been rejected by the Abbey Theatre.