Third annual Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School a tremendous success

THE third annual Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School, which took place over four days in September, was a tremendous success.

The theme, Political Theatre: Learning from the past?, was explored in a series of presentations, a film screening, script writing workshops and in the art created by artists from the North Tipperary Artists’ Collective.

The Hedge School was thrilled that filmmaker Williams Rossa Cole travelled from his home in New York to present his documentary Rebel Wife: The Story of Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa. Cole’s film explores the life of this extraordinary woman, highlighting Mary Jane’s origins as well as her remarkable achievements as a poet, author, public speaker, human rights activist, wife and mother. Following the screening on Wednesday evening, September 17th, members of the audience contributed to the discussion, providing new information on Cole’s great-grandmother.

Participants on Professor James Moran’s script writing workshops on the Thursday and Friday gave the workshops high praise, saying they were provided with “a great learning opportunity”. In their feedback forms they requested the workshops be extended to two full days next year. Professor Moran said he was impressed with the accomplished standard of writing and debate from the attendees.

On Culture Night 2025 Friday September 19th, Ryan O’Meara TD launched the Hedge School exhibition.

The exhibition was curated by Lian Callaghan. Lian, who has a painting in the exhibition, worked as a scenic artist in the Abbey Theatre and in the costume department in many film productions including Braveheart, The Butcher Boy, and Michael Collins.

In her eloquent introduction to the exhibition, Maura Kennedy, founding member of the North Tipperary Artists’ Collective, made reference to specific works by the fourteen artists on show, and on the impetus for their creative responses to the hedge school theme.

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Following the exhibition launch, Professor Moran engaged Ryan O’Meara TD in a fascinating discussion on his views on political theatre. James read a short, powerful play by one of the participants in his workshop, and invited the audience to repeat a refrain within the play. Copies of Pearse’s oration at Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s graveside were handed out to the audience, who each read a line; an extraordinary exercise that emphasised the rhetorical, literary, and theatrical elements in the speech.

On the Saturday, the Hedge School held a one-day seminar in which distinguished academics, Dr Leeann Lane, Dr Ailbhe McDaid, Professor Eugene O’Brien and Professor James Moran made presentations that reflected broadly on the Hedge School theme. The talks were curated by Eleanor Hooker, poet and writer and PhD candidate at the University of Limerick.

Dr Leeann Lane’s keynote address, drawing on her recent acclaimed, academic book on Mary MacSwiney, centred on the life and activism of this exceptional woman. Whilst redressing the reductive terms in which MacSwiney was characterised by the politicians and papers in her day, Dr Lane portrayed MacSwiney as a complex, multi-dimensional, family woman.

In a panel entitled ‘Poetry and Politics: Plural Perspectives’ Dr Ailbhe McDaid and Professor Eugene O’Brien discussed how poets respond to different political events, and the symbolic (even theatrical) language of poetry to capture the past and current political upheavals.

Dr McDaid considered Yeats’ complex interactions with the politics of early years of the State before turning to a more contemporary act of political theatre – the public inquiry.

She noted that “the public inquiry or commission of investigation is a familiar and, arguably, performative act in contemporary Irish politics”. Dr McDaid considered sensitive and wrought poems by Thomas Kinsella, Rachael Hegarty, Celia de Fréine’s and Kimberly Campanello to showcase how poets take ownership of these often-dehumanising political gestures in order to reinstate the individuals erased in the processes of political performativity.

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Professor Eugene O’Brien’s presentation examined the connections between poetry and politics in Northern Ireland. Professor O’Brien, whilst focusing principally on Seamus Heaney's careful adjudications between both poetry and politics, discussed his signature text North, as well as some later poems, most notably 'The Flight Path' from his collection The Spirit Level. Professor O’Brien explored how for Heaney politics and poetry were intertwined, and how the poet demarcated both.

To conclude the day, and to close the 2025 Hedge School, Professor James Moran delivered a talk entitled ‘The playwrights and 1916’. In his presentation he highlighted the ways in which Thomas MacDonagh prepared for the Easter Rising by scripting the play When the Dawn is Come. He invited members of the audience to do a read through of the opening scenes of the play. Professor Moran told how this play mesmerised some of the key dramatists of the twentieth century, including Sean O’Casey, W.B. Yeats, G.B. Shaw and Teresa Deevy, all of whom sought a creative response to the Easter Rising.

Una Johnston, Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School and Museum Director, said she was “pleased with the hugely positive engagement from participants and audience”. Una said she wished to “thank our funders: Creative Ireland Programme; Tipperary County Council; the Department of Culture; Communications and Sport; the Arts Council and Culture Ireland 2025, whose continued support ensures the success of the Hedge School”.

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