Nationality Irish Period 1988–present Role Playwright | Spouse Patti Roche Name Billy Roche Movies The Eclipse | |
Born 1 January 1949 (age 75)
Wexford, Republic of Ireland ( 1949-01-01 ) Debut works Boker Poker Club (Title subsequently changed to 'Handful of Stars') Plays A Handful of Stars, The Wexford trilogy Nominations Laurence Olivier Observer Award for Outstanding Achievement, Satellite Award for Best Original Screenplay People also search for Conor McPherson, Ciaran Hinds, Fionnuala Ni Chiosain, Emer Reynolds, Robert Walpole Books The cavalcaders, Poor beast in the rain, On such as we, The Cavalcaders ; And - Am, Tales from Rainwater Pond | ||
Drama on one playwrights in profile billy roche
Billy Roche (born 11 January 1949) is an Irish playwright and actor. He was born and still lives in Wexford and most of his writings are based there. Originally a singer with The Roach Band, he turned to writing in the 1980s. He has written a number of plays, including The Wexford Trilogy. He has also written screenplay of Trojan Eddie and published a novel, Tumbling Down, and a book of short stories.
Contents
Lay me down softly by billy roche at project arts centre
The Wexford Trilogy
Roche is best known for the three full-length plays forming The Wexford Trilogy, all premiered at the Bush Theatre in London, directed by Robin Lefevre:
The three plays were also directed by Stuart Burge for BBC television in 1993 with the original Bush cast members.
As Michael Billington has noted, the 1980s were not a good decade for new dramatists and one can point to only a handful who made any significant mark. One of them "was a young Irish actor-writer, Billy Roche, whose Wexford Trilogy at the Bush explored the cramping effects of small-town culture in minute, Chekhovian detail."
Other work
His dramatic work includes Amphibians (RSC 1992); The Cavalcaders (Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1993; Royal Court 1994); and On Such As We (Abbey Theatre, Dublin 2001).
After a long absence as a playwright, Roche wrote Lay Me Down Softly, set in a travelling boxing ring "somewhere in Ireland", which received its first performance at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin in November 2008 [1].
As an actor he has appeared in Aristocrats by Brian Friel (Hampstead Theatre 1988), The Cavalcaders (1993), Trojan Eddie (1997), Man About Dog (film comedy 2004) and The Eclipse (2009), a film based loosely on a short story penned by Roche.
He wrote the screenplay for Trojan Eddie (Film Four/Irish Screen, 1997) starring Richard Harris and Stephen Rea.
Roche's literary work includes the novel Tumbling Down (Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1986). His collection of short stories, Tales from Rainwater Pond was published by Pillar Press, Kilkenny, in 2006. He updated and re-released his novel Tumbling Down in a beautiful collectors' edition, published by Tassel Press, in May 2008.
In 2005, Roche handpicked students from all over Wexford for tutoring. Together they invented the first 'Novus' magazine, which went on sale a number of days after the group disbanded. These students, who were tutored by Roche and his longtime friend Eoin Colfer (author of the internationally acclaimed Artemis Fowl novels), were the first in a long line of students under Roche's coaching.
Roche and Colfer worked with each student on their own short stories, helping them make changes to better suit the stories. Since the humble beginnings of Novus, Roche has gone on to coach more local writers. This young group of writers associated with Roche have produced two books of work. Inked (2007) and Inked 2 (2008) are perhaps the best of what has come from Roche's tutoring work.
In 2007 he was elected a member of Aosdana.