Enda Walsh: 'Occasionally you make a work and have no idea how it came about'

Award-winning playwright Enda Walsh talks confidence, claustrophobia, and choices with Marjorie Brennan. His play First Child is being staged at Galway International Arts Festival this month

Enda Walsh.  Picture: Dan Linehan

While his play Medicine was showing at the Galway International Arts Festival last summer, Enda Walsh was in rehearsals for The First Child— the third and final instalment in his operatic collaboration with composer Donnacha Dennehy. Also running at the same time in Galway was Bedsit, the eighth in a series of immersive theatre installations by Walsh — his ninth, Middle Bedroom, is there this year. 

When it comes to ideas, Walsh obviously has no shortage but when it comes to the most important part, executing them, he is on another level entirely. What is his secret?