'I am bemused'

Fiach MacConghail responds.

"I have both an institutional and family connection with Sean O'Casey, both of which are potent. We were in discussions with the O'Casey estate as far back as early 2006. My predecessor produced The Plough and the Stars as late as January 2005 and therefore I discussed taking the rights for The Plough over a longer period of time to allow that gap of time to occur before we could interrogate it again. This is normal practice. I had in-depth discussions about this with the estate and, in the meantime, they encouraged me to investigate O'Casey's later works. So, I had a relationship with the estate and had requested the rights to The Plough long before Garry Hynes approached me about her O'Casey project.

"I remember one conversation with Garry in June 2006 in Minneapolis regarding the O'Casey project, and she was quite specific about it and wanted to build on the success and structure of what she had learned from the Synge cycle (Incidentally, I was one of her original advisors on that project). She wanted to begin the project soon and had a sense of urgency about it. According to my notes, I told her that it made sense that she pursues this with Druid but that there was no need for the Abbey to be involved. I also told her that it would make great sense to me that she should come to direct an O'Casey at the Abbey, but that the co-production between the Abbey and Druid wasn't something that interested me. I also had no intention of producing any of these plays until 2010 at the earliest. Throughout this dialogue with Garry, she knew that I had the rights to The Plough. Our dialogue on the O'Casey cycle petered out and since that meeting in June 2006, I had several subsequent conversations with Garry about many other projects that she might direct at the Abbey.

"Up to late October 2007, I had never enquired about or asked for the rights for Juno and the Paycock. That was 16 months after my meeting with Garry in Minneapolis. In fact, I had assumed that either Garry Hynes or another important Irish theatre company had the rights already to Juno. Astonishingly, this was not the case. The Irish Times(November 7th) reported on Druid's O'Casey cycle being planned for 2008.

"I formally met with representatives of the O'Casey estate in late November 2007 to request the rights for Cock-A-Doodle-Dandy and Juno and to negotiate an extension on the rights for The Plough. This was a culmination of two years' investigative work on the repertoire and does not replicate, in any form, ideology or content, Garry Hynes's idea. I understand, also, that an Irish professional production of Juno will be touring Ireland later this year. So, I am bemused by Garry's allegation that the Abbey took rights of two plays, when clearly Juno is being presented in Ireland in 2008."