It is the first time that all of Synge's plays have been performed together and will involve a company of actors performing across the repertoire with an additional support team of technicians, designers, stage management and support personnel working behind the scenes. This landmark tribute can be enjoyed as a series of double bills over two or three days or as a very special experience when, on selected dates, all six plays are presented on the same day.

Directed by Garry Hynes, assisted by regular collaborators Francis O'Connor (design), David Bolger (movement), Sam Jackson (music), Davy Cunningham (lighting), Kathy Strachan (costumes) and with John Leonard (sound), the productions feature a roll call of Irish acting talent including Marie Mullen, Mick Lally, Eamon Morrissey and Catherine Walsh alongside many of Ireland's finest emerging young stars including Aaron Monaghan and Gemma Reeves.

Company includes

Sarah Jane Drummey
Richard Flood
Simone Kirby
Mick Lally
Marcus Lambe
Nick Lee
Louise Lewis
Eoin Lynch
Hannah Mc Cabe
Charlie Mc Carthy
Aaron Monaghan
Eamon Morrissey
Marie Mullen
Peg Power
Gemma Reeves
Catherine Walsh

DruidSynge

The Shadow of The Glen
The Playboy of The Western World
The Tinker's Wedding
The Well of The Saints
Riders To The Sea
Deirdre of The Sorrows

DruidSynge 2005

Galway Arts Festival, Town Hall Theatre
Sat 16th-Sat 23rd July 2005 & running on until Sat 30th July
Previews Wed 29th June - Sun 3rd July & Mon 11th - Fri 15th July
Bookings Phone Town Hall Theatre, Galway +353-91-569777 Mon-Sat
10am to 7.30pm or phone Galway Arts Festival Box Office +353-91-566577
Mon-Sat 9.30am to 5.30pm (from Mon 20th June) or book online at
www.galwayartsfestival.com

Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Tues 2nd-Sat 13th August (excl Sundays)
Buy on line www.ticketmaster.ie (Telephone & internet bookings subject to booking fee)
Tickets from Ticketmaster 24hr Tel 0818 719 300 (from Ireland); international callers should phone +353 1 4569 569 www.mcd.ie for exclusive live entertainment, news and tickets.

Edinburgh International Festival, King's Theatre
Sat 27th August - Sat 3rd September
Bookings +44 131 473 2000, Mon -Sat 10am to 5pm
Fax +44 131 473 2003; Buy on line www.eif.co.uk

Additional Information:

Druid
Druid, founded in 1975, was the first professional theatre company outside Dublin and is universally recognised as one of the pioneers of the modern cultural development of Ireland in the last three decades.

The company has toured extensively at home and abroad, winning a formidable reputation for both classical and new work, making the company one of the most well known in the English-speaking theatre world.

Druid today continues to be renowned for its award-winning work on the dynamic Irish repertoire including new productions of classics as well as nurturing the work of a new generation of Irish writers.

Druid recently swept the boards in The Irish Times ESB Irish Theatre Awards 2004. DruidSynge productions won awards for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Costume Design and the company's Artistic Director Garry Hynes received The Irish Times ESB Special Tribute Award for her services to Irish Theatre over the past 30 years.

DruidSynge is the culmination of eighteen months of work that began in Spring 2004 with Druid's critically acclaimed production of The Playboy of the Western World. It continued with the DruidSynge production of Playboy and the double-bill of The Well of the Saints and The Tinker's Wedding visiting many of the places that are at the heart of Synge's vision across Ireland, building upon Druid's unique relationship with both Synge and the communities that inspired his work. In spring 2004, after a sell-out run at Dublin's Gaiety, Theatre the DruidSynge production of Playboy visited Geesala, Co Mayo (where the play is set), each of the three Aran Islands (whose landscape and community are synonymous with Synge) and Dun Chaoin in the Kerry Gaeltacht. In autumn, the DruidSynge tour of The Well of the Saints and The Tinker's Wedding included a weeklong visit to Laragh, Glendalough in Co Wicklow (the county where both plays are set and which Synge, although born in Dublin, regarded as his home).

John Millington Synge
In the six years between 1903, when his first play was produced by the Irish National Theatre Society, and 1909, when he died aged just 38, John Millington Synge rose from absolute obscurity to world fame.

His plays created an unprecedented degree of excitement and controversy for their unsentimental portrayal of Irish life, and their earthy, direct language. A century later, they still have the power to move and shock.

A talented student of music, Synge went on from Trinity College Dublin to study in Germany, Italy and Paris, where he studied literature and languages at the Sorbonne. While in Paris he met the young WB Yeats, who famously persuaded him to look for inspiration on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland and then go to Dublin and devote himself to creative work. Synge made his first trip to the Arans in May of 1898, marking the beginning of his short career as a writer.