Enda Walsh
Enda Walsh (born 1967) is an Irish playwright.
Enda Walsh
Biography[edit]
Enda Walsh was born in Kilbarrack, North Dublin on 7 February 1967. His father ran a furniture shop and his mother had been an actress. He is the second youngest of six children. Walsh states that he saw his father, a salesman, as the 'lead actor' in the business, but as Ireland's economy fluctuated, so did furniture sales. Notably during the recession in the 1980s, when profits were low, Walsh says that he was earning more money managing his own newspaper round enterprise than his father was bringing home from the shop.[1] Life in the large family was full of incident and Enda has claimed[1] that many of his plays find their origin in his relationships with his father, his mother and her friends, his three brothers and two sisters.
Enda attended Greendale Community School where he was taught by both Roddy Doyle and Paul Mercier. After studying Communications at Rathmines College and acting for the Dublin Youth Theatre,[2] Walsh travelled in Europe working as a film editor. On his return to Dublin he found few opportunities and so moved to Cork where he acted for theatre-in-education Graffiti Theatre. In 1993 Walsh began working with Pat Kiernan, director of Corcadorca, a collaborative ensemble which devised what Walsh calls 'terrible'[3] plays. In 1996 his Disco Pigs premiered at the Triskel Art Centre in Cork. This was the start of an international career writing for the stage and screen. Feeling himself to be 'too comfortable'[4] in Dublin, in 2005 Walsh and his wife, Jo Ellison, who is currently editor of the Financial Times's How to Spend It, moved to London. They live in Kilburn with their daughter, Ada, and their cockapoo, Alvin.
Themes[edit]
Walsh states that his plays are about 'some sort of love and need for calm and peace'.[15] He says that his play Penelope is about 'longing, love, lost love".[16] He says that 'all the plays are effectively about theatre, about writing'.[1] Also that 'all the plays are about routines'.[1] Walsh has often suggested that what interests him is 'about me actually getting through the day, you know'.[1] He speaks of his experience, in London, of extreme OCD. He sees his characters as needing 'to proclaim and proclaim and proclaim ... and to what? You know, to what, construct rules and sort of mechanisms within their living room but to what end? Only to try to escape them again and probably build more and more routines and patterns and all that sort of thing'.[1] Walsh also states 'what motivates me in theatre has always been to get close to characters who're on the edge of madness, or have entered it. It invigorates me to think that we're all the same….'[17] Another statement Walsh made was 'I don't like seeing everyday life on stage: it's boring. I like my plays to exist in an abstract, expressionistic world: the audience has to learn its rules and then connect with these characters who are, on the surface dreadful monsters'.[2]
Theatre
Film
Radio
Four Big Days in the Life of Dessie Banks: PPI Award for Best Radio Drama
In June 2013, NUI Galway awarded Walsh an honorary doctorate.