Director and Librettist

Enda Walsh

The First Child

Biography

Enda Walsh is a playwright and screenwriter who shot to fame when he won both the George Devine Award and the Stewart Parker Award in 1997 with his play Disco Pigs. He has won Fringe First Awards at the Edinburgh International Festival for his plays The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom and The Guardian named him “one of the most dazzling wordsmiths of contemporary theatre.” Once, his adaptation of the film by John Carney, picked up eight Tony Awards on Broadway, including Best Book. His 2008 biopic, Hunger, told the story of the final days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and won a host of awards, including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He worked on the musical, Lazarus, with David Bowie, which opened at New York Theatre Workshop in December 2015 and transferred to Kings Cross Theatre in London in November 2016. The Last Hotel, his first opera with Donnacha Dennehy, had its world premiere at the Lyceum Theatre as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, and transferred to Dublin, London, New York and Luxembourg. Their second opera, The Second Violinist, premiered at the Galway International Arts Festival in July 2017 and was also seen in London, and Amsterdam. The final work in their operatic trilogy, The First Child, premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival last October and after performances at Galway International Arts Festival will tour to Dublin, Navan, Cork, Limerick and Tralee.

May 2022