Culture Night 2011 at the Gate Lab
September 23rd
6.30pm

This pre-show event is FREE but ticketed; very limited availability.

Please phone Gate Box Office on (01) 8744045

CHRISTOPHER FITZ-SIMON was born in Belfast brought up in Monaghan and went to school in Dublin. He attended Dublin University (Moderatorship in Modern Languages and Literature 1957) where he was Chair of the DU Players and Editor of Icarus. His doctorate was awarded by the University of Ulster in 2003.

He joined RTE TV as a producer/director in 1960 and later held posts as Artistic Director of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, the Irish Theatre Company, and the National Theatre Society (Abbey and Peacock Theatres, Dublin) where he was also Literary Manager for two terms.

He has served on the governing bodies of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Rosc, the Association of Drama Adjudicators, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the National Folk Theatre (Siamsa Tíre), the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig and Wexford Festival Opera.

He is the author of many broadcast plays. Among his books are The Irish Theatre (Thames and Hudson 1983) a copiously illustrated history from he middle ages to the mid-20c; The Boys (Gill & Macmillan/ Heinemann 1994) a biography of Micheál macLíammóir and Hilton Edwards, founders of the Dublin Gate Theatre, which went into four editions in Ireland, the UK and USA; and The Abbey Theatre: the first hundred years (Thames & Hudson 2003) which uses over 1,000 ‘forgotten’ images from the Abbey Archive. He edited New Plays from the Abbey Theatre in 1996 and Players and Painted Stage, the RTE Thomas Davis Lectures, 2004. His memoir of childhood, Eleven Houses (Penguin Ireland hardback 2007 paperback 2008), enjoyed outstandingly favourable reviews, chosen among the ‘best books of 2007’ by Roy Foster, William Trevor and others. His latest book is ‘Buffoonery and Easy Sentiment’ (Carysfort Press 2011) which reviews the popular Irish theatre that was dismissed by Yeats and Gregory.