Sean O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was born at 85 Upper Dorset Street, in the northern inner-city area of Dublin. He was a member of the Church of Ireland but drifted away from the church at an early age.
He left school at the age of fourteen and worked at a variety of jobs, including a nine-years as a railwayman. O'Casey worked in Easons but was sacked for not taking off his cap when collecting his wages.
From the early 1890s, O'Casey and his brother, Archie, put on performances of plays by Dion Boucicault and Shakespeare in the family home.
He joined the Gaelic League in 1906 and learned the Irish language.
He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and became involved in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
In March 1914 he became General Secretary of the Irish Citizen Army.
O'Casey's first accepted play, The Shadow of a Gunman, was performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1923. It was followed by Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926)
The Plough and the Stars was not well received by the Abbey audience and resulted in riots similar to the staging of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in 1907.
He wrote numerous further plays and, in later years, he wrote a six-volume autobiography.