{"id":233043,"date":"2025-12-14T22:24:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T22:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/233043\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T22:24:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T22:24:20","slug":"he-never-seemed-old-to-me-he-was-quite-adventurous-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/233043\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He never seemed old to me… he was quite adventurous\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am on a phone call to playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey<\/a>\u2019s youngest and only surviving child. Shivaun O\u2019Casey lives in Ashburton in Devon, not far from Totnes, where she grew up. Now 86, she is a living link to one of our most famous playwrights. Next year, the Abbey Theatre<\/a> will stage The Plough and the Stars to mark the centenary since its first production. The playwright\u2019s daughter intends to be there on opening night to see it; a remarkable connection to a storied past. <\/p>\n

Shivaun O\u2019Casey, a former actor, has just published a memoir. Next Year will be a Good One; Life with Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey, My Family and Theatre. Her father was 58 when she was born in 1939 in England to mother Eileen. Se\u00e1n had been living in Britain<\/a> for some years by then. Shivaun was the youngest of three; there were two older brothers, Breon and Niall. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe never seemed old to me,\u201d she recalls now. \u201cI remember playing with him a lot, and he was quite adventurous in playing; he would turn a table upside down and tie a tablecloth to one of the legs and we\u2019d be on a boat sailing over the sea.\u201d I take a moment to picture the man who wrote the famous line: \u201cWhat is the stars, Joxer?\u201d playing pirate ships on the floor with his small daughter.<\/p>\n

The family had moved to Devon from London, almost entirely due to the advice of George Bernard Shaw<\/a>, a friend of Se\u00e1n\u2019s. Son Breon was 11, and in need of a new school. <\/p>\n

\u201cSe\u00e1n and Eileen had not had much education. They asked Shaw for advice.\u201d He recommended an experimental new school called Dartington Hall in Devon, which he was aware of through the Fabian Society, of which he was a member. The Fabian Society held a summer school there each year. In time, Shivaun went there too. <\/p>\n

What does she recall learning there at that progressive school?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a school where if you were good at the arts, that was encouraged. You weren\u2019t pushed to the sciences. I was hopeless at maths, but quite good at other things. You didn\u2019t have uniforms; it was coeducational, boys and girls together. There were wonderful teachers. Three of them were Spanish from the Spanish Civil War. One who taught biology was a very famous geneticist,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very well endowed. We had two skeletons in the biology lab. We had a very good gym, and we had a swimming pool, where we all swam in the nude \u2013 which shocked a lot of the locals but we didn\u2019t think much about it. And we had wonderful art teachers. It gave you an ability to not only use your head but to use your hands as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shivaun went on to study drama, and worked and toured as an actor. She also sometimes made props for shows. In her memoir, a good half of the 428 pages are given over to the reproduction of letters, notes and sketches by family members. Some were sent by her parents, some were to her from her father, some are from Shivaun to her father. Added together, it\u2019s a significant archive.<\/p>\n

\"SeánSe\u00e1n O\u2019Casey: The bulk of his papers were sold to the New York Public Library by his widow after his death in 1964 <\/p>\n

Have any of these documents been published before?<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of the letters that Se\u00e1n sent me have been published before,\u201d she says. They remain in her possession. The bulk of Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s papers were sold to the New York Public Library by his widow after his death in 1964. Among them were drafts of plays and essays, diaries, notebooks, and letters between many writers, including WB Yeats<\/a>, Lady Gregory<\/a> and George Bernard Shaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New York Public Library were avid collectors at the time, when Se\u00e1n died. It\u2019s where most of the play material is,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\"AuthorAuthor Roddy Doyle, then Abbey Theatre director Fiach Mac Conghail and Shivaun O’Casey at a performance of The Plough and the Stars at the O’Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College in 2012. Photograph: Alan Betson \"FiachFiach Mac Conghail, then director of the Abbey Theatre, and Shivaun O’Casey at the O’Reilly Theatre, Belvedere College in 2012. Photograph: Alan Betson <\/p>\n

The majority of the documents reproduced in Next Year will be a Good One belong to Shivaun. She also had some letters from Samuel Beckett<\/a>, whom she met several times. Beckett was so taken by Shivaun that he told her he wanted to write a play about her. \u201cHe said I should come to Paris and he would write a play for me,\u201d she writes in her memoir. They did have dinner together in Paris at one stage, but no play ever materialised, <\/p>\n

She had some correspondence from Beckett, but it has since been sold. \u201cI was very hard up,\u201d as she puts it. The other documents \u2013 the letters and notes \u2013 which she includes in her memoir, are still in her possession. For now, anyway. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll have to sell them, I think because it would be the only money I would have at the end of my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI have not been very good at making money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I never worried about my identity. I suppose [I felt] both Irish and English, but never with any nationalist fervour. We used to get shamrocks sent to us for St Patrick\u2019s Day which I did wear with a sense of pride and also shared them with my friends<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As to where they might end up, she says, \u201cI would want them to go to the Irish National Library<\/a> because they have an archive there. They have his library, and they have his table and his desk and his hats; all the coloured hats, and typewriters and everything. So I\u2019m trying to consolidate them in Dublin, but we\u2019ll have to see what happens. But that\u2019s what I would like. If I could afford it, so to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shivaun O\u2019Casey\u2019s first visit to Ireland was to Dublin when she was 15. It was, in fact, her first time out of England. She travelled over with her mother Eileen to see a production of Se\u00e1n\u2019s new play, The Bishop\u2019s Bonfire. It was being staged at the Gaiety Theatre<\/a>. \u201cSe\u00e1n made it clear he never now sends new plays to the Abbey,\u201d she writes in the memoir. <\/p>\n

Mother and daughter were put up in the Shelbourne Hotel. Shivaun describes seeing the rehearsal in the Gaiety: \u201cred plush and a horseshoe-shaped auditorium, Victorian and decorated as such\u201d. Afterwards, they were taken to the famous Jammet\u2019s restaurant. The following day, she went to designer Sybil Connolly for an outfit for opening night. It was the grandest of introductions to the city where her father\u2019s famous play, The Plough and the Stars, had been set \u2013 not in one of Dublin\u2019s finest hotels, but in the inner-city tenements in 1916.<\/p>\n

What does she think her father would have made of the fact that the Abbey Theatre is staging a centenary version of The Plough and the Stars next year?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019d be delighted. I am certainly delighted. And Tom Creed<\/a> is directing it, so that is exciting. I think he\u2019d be very pleased about that. He did of course always long for his later plays to be done, The Drums of Father Ned, for instance. I think he\u2019d be very pleased that Ireland is so different now. So much more open.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has probably seen more productions of The Plough and the Stars than anyone you know. Does she have any particular likes or dislikes of what she has seen? <\/p>\n

[\u00a0R\u00f3is\u00edn Ingle: I\u2019m enjoying fantastic TV that features middle-aged women. It feels a bit revolutionaryOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like it when it\u2019s done in high-vis jackets,\u201d Shivaun says, referring to the way period plays sometimes use modern dress. \u201cI don\u2019t think \u2013 this is my own personal opinion \u2013 that the history plays, because they are based within Ireland\u2019s history, can be changed like that. I think it\u2019s the same with some of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, it makes a nonsense of the dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

She does have praise for a Nora (the character of Nora Clitheroe) in The Plough and Stars that she admired greatly: Cathy Belton<\/a>, who played the part in a former Abbey production. <\/p>\n

Does Shivaun think her father\u2019s work is properly acknowledged in Ireland now?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to say. Of course I wouldn\u2019t say yes, being his daughter. I think his autobiographies are rather ignored, and I think they\u2019re wonderful. And if you\u2019re studying Irish history, they\u2019re rather important, and I think the later work [later plays] is still ignored. But they are different to his early work, because they are imaginative, and more expressionistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask her about identity. She was born and raised in England, but to Irish parents, one of whom wrote about a country she didn\u2019t visit until she was 15. <\/p>\n

\u201cI never worried about my identity. I suppose [I felt] both Irish and English, but never with any nationalist fervour. We used to get shamrocks sent to us for St Patrick\u2019s Day which I did wear with a sense of pride and also shared them with my friends. Se\u00e1n was an internal socialist and I fell into thinking the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0 New to the Parish \u2018I knew nothing about this island\u2019: From Venezuela to IrelandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s ashes were scattered in the Tennyson and Shelley rose gardens in Golders Green Crematorium in 1964. By the time her mother Eileen died some decades later, it was forbidden to scatter ashes at that location, so Eileen O\u2019Casey is as close as her daughter could get her to Se\u00e1n. <\/p>\n

The memoir stops in 1964 with her father\u2019s death. Will there be a follow-up? \u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d she says. \u201cIt stopped there because I really wanted to show Se\u00e1n\u2019s family to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shivaun O\u2019Casey continues to paint and draw. \u201cIt is something I want to do and I\u2019m driven to it. I don\u2019t know if it makes me happy, because you are always looking at it and criticising it and wondering about it, but it is something I enjoy doing, and will do more of.\u201d She has just finished a pastel drawing of a still life of quinces. <\/p>\n

Several times in our conversation, she praises the generations coming after her, including her two granddaughters, Agnes and Esther, both in their 20s. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would say to the younger generation \u2013 which I never managed to do myself \u2013 to be confident in yourself. Not to be reliant too much on loving a man or a woman, or whoever you love. Not to feel you have to be with them. As my father advised me in one of his letters, I was always inclined to make a swan out of a goose. I always felt you could change people for the better, but you can\u2019t. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I had been more confident and lived my own life and I wish that all the young people would feel confident. And I think they are much more confident in this day and age than our lot was, or certainly more than me.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the interview, I ask if there is anything else she\u2019d like to add. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen will something be done about the terrible things happening in Palestine and Ukraine and the Sudan?\u201d she says. \u201cI want some glimmer of hope, but it is pretty disastrous at the moment. That can\u2019t help but impinge on one\u2019s outlook. But the young people are wonderful. They have great spirit, the ones that I know. I think that brings me a sense of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next Year will be a Good One; Life with Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey, My Family and Theatre, by Shivaun O\u2019Casey and edited by John Wilson Foster, is published by Belcouver Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am on a phone call to playwright Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey\u2019s youngest and only surviving child. Shivaun O\u2019Casey lives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[112771,124134,18,117,112599,124131,19,17,124133,72289,79068,50224,124132,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-233043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-abbey-theatre","9":"tag-cathy-belton","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-gaiety-theatre","13":"tag-george-bernard-shaw","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-lady-gregory","17":"tag-national-library-of-ireland","18":"tag-samuel-beckett","19":"tag-sean-o-casey","20":"tag-wb-yeats","21":"tag-weekendreview"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115720268797991139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}