Patricia Burke Brogan
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| Patrick Lonergan, Professor of Drama NUIG, Patricia Burke Brogan & Dr. James J. Brown, President of NUIG |
Born in County Clare, and now living in Galway City, Patricia was a teacher in County Galway for many years.
Patricia has won many awards nationally and internationally for her plays, poems, graphics and short stories. Her award-winning play Eclipsed, first produced in 1992, has since been produced all over the world and has been translated into many languages, including Japanese and Spanish for recent productions in Tokyo and Peru.
Eclipsed focusses bravely and compassionately on the plight of the women in Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries. ‘Society and the State colluded with the Sisters in charge of the laundries, in order to rid themselves of those unwanted outcasts, those unmarried Irish mothers’. As Uachtaráin na hÉireann Michael D. Higgins stated ‘Eclipsed changed everything’.
Eclipsed was followed by other important works, namely her plays, Stained Glass at Samhain and Requiem of Love. Recently she published her Memoir with Grykes and Turloughs, a moving account of her life, which takes us from her upbringing in country villages, to boarding school, teacher training college, entering the novitiate, marriage, and her artistic life as a poet, playwright and visual artist.
Patricia, as Professor of Drama, Dr. Patrick Lonergan of NUIG, stated at the conferring, ‘shows that the lone individual can make a difference to society and that an artist can make our world a better place in which to live. This is lasting and valuable and an all too rare achievement.’
We, in Galway RTA, are very proud of Patricia Burke Brogan.
