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Frank McGuinness
 
 
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Frank McGuinness (born 29 July 1953 in County Donegal
County Donegal

County Donegal is a county located in the west of the Province of Ulster, in the northwest of Ireland. It is one of three counties in the Province of Ulster that do not form part of Northern Ireland....
, Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
) is an award-winning Irish playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
, translator
Translation

Translation is the hermeneutics of the Meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an Dynamic and formal equivalence text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another language....
 and poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
.

inness was born in Buncrana
Buncrana

Buncrana is a town in County Donegal, the northwest of Republic of Ireland, located on the Inishowen peninsula, along Lough Swilly, 10 kilometres from Derry and 43 kilometres from Letterkenny....
, a town located on the Inishowen
Inishowen

Inishowen is a peninsula in County Donegal, and also the largest peninsula in Ireland. It pre-dates the formation of the county in which it is located by centuries....
 Peninsula of County Donegal
County Donegal

County Donegal is a county located in the west of the Province of Ulster, in the northwest of Ireland. It is one of three counties in the Province of Ulster that do not form part of Northern Ireland....
, part of the Province of Ulster
Ulster

Ulster is one of the four Provinces of Ireland of Ireland, in addition to Connacht, Munster and Leinster. The name is sometimes informally used as a synonym for Northern Ireland, one of the countries of the United Kingdom, although Northern Ireland covers only two thirds of Ulster....
 in the Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland

Ireland is an Island country in north-western Europe. The modern Sovereignty state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned by the British on 3 May 1921....
. He was educated locally and at University College Dublin, where he studied Pure English and medieval studies to postgraduate level.

He first came to prominence with his play The Factory Girls, but established his reputation with his play about World War I, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which was staged initially in Dublin's Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre

The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904, and despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, has remained active to the present day....
 and then internationally.






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Frank McGuinness (born 29 July 1953 in County Donegal
County Donegal

County Donegal is a county located in the west of the Province of Ulster, in the northwest of Ireland. It is one of three counties in the Province of Ulster that do not form part of Northern Ireland....
, Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
) is an award-winning Irish playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
, translator
Translation

Translation is the hermeneutics of the Meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an Dynamic and formal equivalence text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another language....
 and poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
.

Biography

McGuinness was born in Buncrana
Buncrana

Buncrana is a town in County Donegal, the northwest of Republic of Ireland, located on the Inishowen peninsula, along Lough Swilly, 10 kilometres from Derry and 43 kilometres from Letterkenny....
, a town located on the Inishowen
Inishowen

Inishowen is a peninsula in County Donegal, and also the largest peninsula in Ireland. It pre-dates the formation of the county in which it is located by centuries....
 Peninsula of County Donegal
County Donegal

County Donegal is a county located in the west of the Province of Ulster, in the northwest of Ireland. It is one of three counties in the Province of Ulster that do not form part of Northern Ireland....
, part of the Province of Ulster
Ulster

Ulster is one of the four Provinces of Ireland of Ireland, in addition to Connacht, Munster and Leinster. The name is sometimes informally used as a synonym for Northern Ireland, one of the countries of the United Kingdom, although Northern Ireland covers only two thirds of Ulster....
 in the Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland

Ireland is an Island country in north-western Europe. The modern Sovereignty state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned by the British on 3 May 1921....
. He was educated locally and at University College Dublin, where he studied Pure English and medieval studies to postgraduate level.

He first came to prominence with his play The Factory Girls, but established his reputation with his play about World War I, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which was staged initially in Dublin's Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre

The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904, and despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, has remained active to the present day....
 and then internationally. It won numerous awards including the London Evening Standard
Evening Standard

The Evening Standard is an United Kingdom tabloid regional local newspaper published and sold in London and surrounding areas of southeast England....
 Award for Most Promising Playwright for McGuinness. He has also written new translations of classic dramas, including works by Anton Chekov, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht

was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
 and Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Nineteenth-century theatre Norway playwright of realism drama and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre....
. In addition, he wrote the screenplay for the film Dancing at Lughnasa
Dancing at Lughnasa

Dancing at Lughnasa is a 1990 play by dramatist Brian Friel set in Ireland's County Donegal in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg....
, adapting the stage play by fellow Irishman (and, indeed, fellow Ulsterman) Brian Friel
Brian Friel

Brian Friel is an Irish people dramatist and theatre director from Northern Ireland....
.

McGuinness's first poetry anthology, Booterstown, was published in 1994. Several of his poems have been recorded by Marianne Faithfull, including Electra, After the Ceasefire and The Wedding.

McGuinness previously lectured in Linguistics and Drama at the University of Ulster
University of Ulster

The University of Ulster is a multi-centre university located in Northern Ireland and is the largest single university on the island of Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland....
, Medieval Studies at University College, Dublin and English at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Then he was a writer-in-residence lecturing at University College Dublin before being appointed Professor of creative writing in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin.

Works


Plays

  • The Glass God (Platform Theatre Group, Dublin, 1982)
  • The Factory Girls (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1982)
  • Borderlands
    Borderlands

    * Places in the Wheel of Time series#Borderlands, a location in the Wheel of Time series* Borderlands , a board game by Eon* Borderlands , a crime thriller novel from author Brian McGilloway...
     (TEAM Educational Theatre Company, 1984)
  • Gatherers (TEAM Educational Theatre Company, 1985)
  • Ladybag (Damer Hall, Dublin for Dublin Theatre Festival, 1985)
  • Baglady (Abbey, 1985)
  • Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (Abbey, 1985; Hampstead Theatre
    Hampstead Theatre

    Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing....
    , London, 1986)
  • Innocence
    Innocence

    Innocence is a term used to indicate a general lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, sin, or wrongdoing. In a Criminal law, innocence refers to the lack of guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime....
     (Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1986)
  • Times In It (Peacock stage of Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1988: triple bill consisting of 'Feed the Money and Keep Them Coming'; 'Brides of Ladybag' and 'Flesh and Blood')
  • Cathaginians (Abbey, 1988; Hampstead, 1989)
  • Mary and Lizzie (RSC, 1989)
  • The Bread Man (Gate, 1991)
  • Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
    Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

    Someone Who'll Watch over Me is a play written by Irish people dramatist Frank McGuinness. The play focuses on the trials and tribulations of an Irishman, an Englishman and an United States who are kidnapped and held hostage by unseen Arabs in Lebanon....
     (Hampstead, West End and Broadway, 1992)
  • The Bird Sanctuary (Abbey, 1993)
  • Mutabilitie (RNT, 1997)
  • Dolly West's Kitchen
    Dolly West's Kitchen

    Dolly West's Kitchen is a dark Ireland and deeply Chekhovian play written by playwright Frank McGuinness. First staged in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1999 and set during the Second World War in the town of Buncrana, Co....
     (Abbey, 1999)
  • Speaking Like Magpies (RSC, The Swan Theatre, Straford-upon-Avon, 2005)
  • Gates of Gold (Gate Theatre, Dublin, 2002. UK premiere Finborough Theatre
    Finborough Theatre

    Founded in 1980, the Finborough Theatre in the Earls Court neighborhood of London, United Kingdom , presents new United Kingdom writing, United Kingdom premieres of overseas drama , music theatre, and rarely seen rediscovered 19th and 20th century Play ....
    , 2004. West End
    West End theatre

    West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's "Theatreland". Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English language world....
     transfer 2006.)
  • There Came a Gypsy Riding (Almeida Theatre, London, 2007)
  • The Holy Moley Jesus Story (Greash Theatre, Doblin, 2008)


Selected Translations

  • Rosmersholm
    Rosmersholm

    Rosmersholm is a Play written in 1886 by Norwegian people playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the estimation of many critics the piece is Ibsen's masterwork, only equalled by The Wild Duck of 1884....
     by Henrik Ibsen
    Henrik Ibsen

    Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Nineteenth-century theatre Norway playwright of realism drama and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre....
     (RNT, 1987)
  • Peer Gynt
    Peer Gynt

    Peer Gynt is a five-Act play in Verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Interpreted in its day as a satire on the Norwegian people personality, Peer Gynt is the story of a life based on avoidance....
     by Henrik Ibsen (Gate, 1988; RSC and world tour, 1994)
  • Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler

    Hedda Gabler is a Play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of Realism , nineteenth century theatre, and Drama ....
     by Henrik Ibsen (Roundabout Theatre, Broadway, 1994)
  • A Doll's House
    A Doll's House

    A Doll's House is an 1879 Play by Norway playwright Henrik Ibsen. Written one year after The Pillars of Society, the play was the first of Ibsen's to create a sensation and is now perhaps his most famous play, and required reading in many secondary schools and universities....
     by Henrik Ibsen (Playhouse Theatre, Broadway, 1997)
  • Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian Short story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature....
     (Gate and Royal Court, 1990)
  • Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya

    Uncle Vanya is a tragicomedy by the Russian literature playwright Anton Chekhov published in 1899. Its first major performance was in 1900 under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....
     by Anton Chekhov (Field Day Production, 1995)
  • Yerma
    Yerma

    Yerma is a Play by the Spain dramatist Federico Garc?a Lorca. It was written in 1934 in literature, and first performed that same year. Lorca describes the play as "a Tragedy poem."...
     by Federico García Lorca
    Federico García Lorca

    Federico Garc?a Lorca was a Spain poet, dramatist and theatre director. An emblematic member of the Generation of '27, he was abducted and murdered by persons likely affiliated with the Nationalist cause at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War....
     (Abbey, 1987)
  • The Threepenny Opera
    The Threepenny Opera

    The Threepenny Opera is a Musical theatre by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher....
     by Bertolt Brecht
    Bertolt Brecht

    was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
     (Gate, 1987)
  • The Caucasian Chalk Circle
    The Caucasian Chalk Circle

    The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play by the German Modernism playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a girl who steals a baby but becomes a better mother than its natural parents....
     by Bertolt Brecht (RNT, 1997)
  • Electra
    Electra (Sophocles)

    Electra or Elektra is a Ancient Greece tragedy Play by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career....
     by Sophocles
    Sophocles

    Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
     (Donmar and Broadway)
  • The Storm by Alexander Ostrovsky (Almeida)
  • Hecuba
    Hecuba

    Hecuba was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy, with whom she had 19 children. The most famous of said children was Hector of Troy....
     by Euripides
    Euripides

    Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
  • Phaedra
    Phaedra

    Phaedra can refer to:*Phaedra *Various artistic works based on the legend:**Hippolytus by Euripides**Phaedra by Seneca the Younger...
     by Seneca
    Seneca the Younger

    Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Ancient Rome Stoicism philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature....
  • Oedipus
    Oedipus the King

    Oedipus the King is an Classical Athens tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c. 429 B.C.E. It was the second of Sophocles' three Theban plays to be produced, but it comes first in the internal chronology, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone ....
     by Sophocles
    Sophocles

    Sophocles was the second of the three classical Greece tragedy whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides....
     (Royal National Theatre
    Royal National Theatre

    The Royal National Theatre, London, England, is generally known as the National Theatre and commonly as The National. It is located on the The South Bank in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge....
    )
  • Helen
    Helen (play)

    Helen is a drama by Euripides, probably first produced in 412 BC for the Dionysia. The play shares much in common with another of Euripides' works, Iphigeneia in Tauris....
     by Euripides (Shakespeare's Globe
    Shakespeare's Globe

    Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which officially opened in 1997, is a reconstruction of The Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames....
    , 2008)


Screenplays

  • Dancing at Lughnasa
    Dancing at Lughnasa

    Dancing at Lughnasa is a 1990 play by dramatist Brian Friel set in Ireland's County Donegal in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg....
     (adaptation of play by Brian Friel
    Brian Friel

    Brian Friel is an Irish people dramatist and theatre director from Northern Ireland....
    )


External links



Additional reading

  • Eamonn Jordan The feast of famine: the plays of Frank McGuinness (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997) ISBN 3906757714
  • Helen Lojek (ed.) The theatre of Frank McGuinness: stages of mutability (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2002) ISBN 1-904505-01-5
  • Hiroko Mikami, Frank McGuinness and his Theatre of Paradox (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2002)