Clodagh Finn: Why Abbey playwright Teresa Deevy deserves to be a household name

Teresa Deevy's plays about people on the margins looking for a voice were out of favour in the conservative Ireland of the 1930s, writes Clodagh Finn

Playwright Teresa Deevy's work is being celebrated this week. Photograph by Olaf Deevy, courtesy of the Deevy family.

It is a pity that there is no way to tell Teresa Deevy, the deaf playwright who wrote for the Abbey stage with such luminaries as JM Synge, Seán O’Casey and Lady Gregory, that her time in the limelight would eventually come.

She might not be a household name yet, but the woman once described as the “Irish Chekhov” is being celebrated this week with the first conference entirely dedicated to her work. Under normal circumstances, that might be an event reserved for theatre scholars, but Zoom and lockdown have magically conspired to open up doors that we might not normally pass through.