Jim FitzGerald: Jim FitzGerald, who has died aged 74, was a stage director and television producer of great flair and imagination.
He was at the cutting edge of Irish theatre in the 1950s and 1960s and helped to launch the careers of playwrights Tom Kilroy, Hugh Leonard and Tom Murphy. He also made a significant contribution to television drama in its formative years.
To the producer Phyllis Ryan he was "the only director I have ever encountered whom I could truly call a genius". He was Godfrey Quigley's "cross and inspiration".
And he was greatly admired by the many crews and actors with whom he worked. A wiry agile man with a tough grainy intelligence, he was once described by the RTÉ Guide as "a north-side Dubliner, as liable to bay out the Dorset Street gurrier's war-cry as to quote appositely from a mind well-stocked with literature, polemic, and healthy ribaldry".
He collaborated in November 1966 with Colm Ó Briain in organising Project 67, the first attempt at cross-fertilisation of the arts in Ireland. The Gate Theatre was hired for three weeks and events included plays, music performances and an art exhibition that featured work by John Behan, Charles Cullen, Michael Kane and John Kelly.
Edna O'Brien was invited to address a meeting to protest at the censorship laws. She brought copies of her books, which were then banned in Ireland, and Customs officers at Dublin Airport seized them. Jim FitzGerald had tipped off the press and the story made headline news.
Actors, including Fionnuala Flanagan and T.P. McKenna, read extracts from O'Brien's work to a packed meeting, highlighting the absurd situation whereby words that could be freely spoken in public could not be read in private. Within six months the censorship laws were liberalised while, in due course, Project 67 evolved into the Project Arts Centre.
Jim FitzGerald was born in Dublin on August 13th, 1929, the son of Gerald FitzGerald and his wife Kathleen (née Keogh). He had little formal education and effectively educated himself, reading eight hours a day in the National Library and studying the paintings at the National Gallery.
Drawn to the stage, he became involved with the Mercury and New Theatre groups and, on emigrating to England, he contacted the Communist Party in London who put him in touch with Unity Theatre.
There he served his apprenticeship and he later worked with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford East. He did not rate Littlewood very highly and disliked what he considered to be her condescending attitude to the working class. In London he shared a house with Dominic Behan, Patrick Galvin, and Jim Phelan.
Returning to Dublin in 1954, he worked as an actor with Lord Longford's company at the Gate Theatre. He then went to work with the art dealer Victor Waddington. His stage career took off with the Globe theatre company.
Under his inspired direction the company's actors matured into fine artists, and he introduced Dublin audiences to the work of Tennessee Williams, Henry Miller, Ugo Betti, and Federico Garcia Lorca. When legal action threatened the Pike Theatre over its production of The Rose Tattoo, he publicly expressed his solidarity by organising the defence fund.
He was the obvious choice to direct Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for Gemini Productions. Rehearsals got off to a sluggish start but he put the cast on their toes, telling them that it was a "damn fine play" and that he wanted performances. Staged at the Gas Company Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, it was a great success.
However, the company chairman informed Gemini that the play's "dreadful language" had so upset a colleague's wife on opening night that she fainted and had to be taken home.
Either it was taken off, he warned, or Gemini's tenancy would be terminated. The play continued at the Eblana Theatre.
Jim FitzGerald scored one of his greatest artistic triumphs in 1962 with Hugh Leonard's Stephen D. Fully aware of the masterpiece entrusted to him, he forswore alcohol and lived off his nerves at rehearsals, chain-smoking and drinking milk by the gallon.
He designed the set, essentially a bare stage with a rostrum at the back outlined against a deep blue cyclorama, explaining that the actors together with a few spotlights and props would create the illusion of the play's many locations. It was audacious but it worked brilliantly.
The production, an outstanding success in Dublin, transferred to London where it played to packed houses. Both the director and the set were highly praised. "Fitz went into a bacchanalian frenzy," Phyllis Ryan recalled, "and drank the clubs dry". The production won further plaudits in Amsterdam, Zurich and Paris.
In the early 1960s Telifís Éireann appointed Jim FitzGerald head of drama. But he was not suited to what was essentially a management job.
A hands-on stage director at heart, he was unable to decouple from this role.
However, he did produce such quality television dramas as Mourn the Ivy Leaf, In The Train and The Loves of Cass Maguire with Siobhán McKenna. He also produced the magazine programme Broadsheet and the arts series Spectrum, which included an inspired Jack MacGowran in Beckett's Act Without Words and a first-class film about Edward Delaney's sculpture.
In 1973 he staged a Yeats double-bill - The Heron's Egg and Purgatory - at the Peacock Theatre. He was for a time resident director at the Oscar Theatre, Ballsbridge, and he taught classes at the Actors' Centre. In later years he appeared in both The Spike and Bracken.
His daughters, Catherine, Susan and Shelah, grandchildren, and Chris FitzGerald and Noeline Coffey survive him.
Jim FitzGerald: born, August 13th, 1929; died, September 9th, 2003