Billy Roche
Billy Roche | |
---|---|
Born | (1949-01-11) 11 January 1949 (age 75) Wexford, Republic of Ireland |
Nationality | Irish |
Period | 1988–present |
Spouse | Patti 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.
Career
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:
- A Handful of Stars (1988)
- Set in the sleazy pool room of a Wexford snooker club: "If the stars are the twinkling illusion of a smile on a woman's face, adolescent longings soon contrive to send one boy up the aisle to a shotgun wedding and the other down river to face penal retribution." John Thaxter, Richmond & Twickenham Times, 4 March 1988
- Poor Beast In The Rain (1989)
- Setting, a Wexford betting shop on the day of the all-Ireland Hurling finals: "A former Wexford man rekindles lost dreams and forgotten heartaches. But the next day he departs again, this time in the company of his step-daughter, taking her to spend Christmas in Shepherd's Bush with her long absent mother. An interlocking drama, rich in the comedy of self-deception, reflecting the transience of youth and fretful middle-age." Ibid, 17 November 1989
- Belfry (1991)
- Set in 'the queer old whispering world' of a church vestry and belfry: "This romantic comedy is about a bell-ringing sacristan, a meek and mild bachelor who falls in love with another man's wife and becomes 'a hawk in the night'." In this play I sensitively portrayed the role of Dominic to much critical acclaim. I was the talk of the town afterwards, so i was. Ibid, 22 November 1991
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."[1]
Other work
- Theatre
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]. Along with and producer Actor Peter McCamley, Billy Adapted, directed and Tour in a One-man Stage Version of his novella ‘The Diary of Maynard Perdu’, 2017–2019.
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.
- Films
He wrote the screenplay for Trojan Eddie (Film Four/Irish Screen, 1997) starring Richard Harris and Stephen Rea.
- Books
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. He wrote the novella ‘The Diary of Maynard Perdu’ (Lantern, Wexford, 2008)
- Tutoring
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 Aosdána.
References
- ^ Billington, Michael (2007). "VIII Scenes From An Execution: 1979–90". State of the Nation: British Theatre since 1945. Faber and Faber. p. 318. ISBN 978-0-571-21034-3. OCLC 163616670.
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.
Sources
- Theatre Record and its annual Indexes
- Halliwell's Film Companion
External links
- Billy Roche at IMDb
- Irish Theatre Institute playography: Billy Roche
- Doollee.com playwright database: Billy Roche
- v
- t
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- Tom Stoppard for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Wole Soyinka for The Interpreters (shared) (1967)
- Peter Nichols for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967)
- Peter Barnes for The Ruling Class and Edward Bond for Narrow Road to the Deep North (shared) (1968)
- Howard Brenton for Christie in Love (1969)
- Freehold Company and Peter Hulton (joint) for Freehold on Antigone (1970)
- Mustapha Matura for As Time Goes By (1971)
- Heathcote Williams for AC/DC (1972)
- John Arden (1973)
- David Rudkin (1974)
- David Edgar for Destiny (1975)
- David Lan for The Winter Dancers (1976)
- David Halliwell for Prejudice and Snoo Wilson for The Glad Hand (1978)
- Stephen Bill (1979)
- David Pownall for Beef (1981)
- Karim Alrawi for Migrations (1982)
- Peter Flannery for Our Friends in the North (1983)
- Ron Hutchinson for The Rat in the Skull (1984)
- Guy Hibbert for On the Edge and Heidi Thomas for Shamrocks & Crocodiles (shared) (1985)
- Nick Dear for The Art of Success (1986)
- Iain Heggie for American Bagpipes (1988)
- Billy Roche for A Handful of Stars (1989)
- Lucy Gannon for Keeping Tom Nice (1990)
- Terry Johnson for Imagine Drowning (1991)
- Rod Wooden for Your Home in the West (1992)
- Martin Crimp for The Treatment and Helen Edmundson for The Clearing (shared) (1993)
- Jonathan Harvey for Beautiful Thing (1994)
- Joe Penhall for Some Voices (1995)
- Ayub Khan-Din for East is East (1996)
- Ann Coburn for Get Up and Tie Your Fingers (1997)
- Roy Williams for Starstruck (1998/9)
- David Greig for The Cosmonaut's Last Message ... and Tanika Gupta for The Waiting Room (shared) (2000)
- Zinnie Harris for Further than the Furthest Thing (2001)
- Peter Rumney for Jumping on my Shadow (2002)
- Rona Munro for Iron (2003)
- Owen McCafferty for Scenes from the Big Picture (2004)
- Fin Kennedy for How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (2005)
- James Philips for The Rubenstein Kiss and Fraser Grace for Breakfast with Mugabe (shared) (2006)
- Dennis Kelly for Taking Care of Baby (2007)
- Bryony Lavery for Stockholm (2008)
- Alexi Kaye Campbell for The Pride (2009)
- Tim Crouch for The Author and Lucy Kirkwood for It Felt Empty When the Heart Went at First but It Is Alright Now (shared) (2010)