Margaretta D'Arcy

She was born in London to a Russian Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father.[2] D'Arcy worked in small theatres in Dublin from the age of fifteen and later became an actress.[7]

Married in 1957 to English playwright and author John Arden, they frequently collaborated.[8] They settled in Galway and established the Galway Theatre Workshop in 1976. The couple had five sons, one of whom predeceased his mother.[7]

The couple wrote a number of stage pieces and improvisational works for amateur and student players, including The Happy Haven (1960) and The Workhouse Donkey. She has written and produced many plays, including The Non-Stop Connolly Show.[3]

D'Arcy has also written a number of books, including Tell Them Everything, Awkward Corners (with John Arden), and Galway's Pirate Women: A Global Trawl.[9]

As an activist, in 1961, D'Arcy joined the anti-nuclear Committee of 100, led by Bertrand Russell. Jailed in Armagh Prison in Northern Ireland, her book Tell Them Everything tells the story of her time during the Armagh and H-Block protests.[3]

D'Arcy also directed Yellow Gate Women, a film about the attempts by women of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp to outwit the British and United States Military at RAF Greenham Common with bolt cutters and legal challenges.[10] Challenging censorship since 1987, she ran a women's kitchen pirate-radio from her home in Galway.[3]

In 2011, D'Arcy refused to stand for a minute's silence to honor a PSNI officer Ronan Kerr, killed by dissident republicans, at an Aosdana meeting. Her actions were deliberate, she told media afterwards, which attracted fierce criticism of her perceived support for armed republican groups in Northern Ireland.[11]

Along with Niall Farrell, she was arrested in October 2012 for scaling the perimeter fence of Shannon Airport, in protest at the use of the airport as a stopover for US military flights.

• Aosdána (member since its inauguration)
• Member of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC)
• Executive member of AMARC's Women's International Network (WIN)

• List of peace activists

• Bourke, Angela; Deane, Seamus, eds. (2002), "Margaretta D'Arcy", The Field day anthology of Irish writing: Irish women's writing and traditions, 5, New York: New York University Press, ISBN 978-0-8147-9907-9, OCLC 633940969, retrieved 4 October 2010
• Marowitz C, Trussler S (1968) [1967], Theatre at work: playwrights and productions in the modern British theatre, New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 36, 53, 57, OCLC 411681, retrieved 4 October 2010
• Martin, Seymour-Smith (1986), Macmillan Guide to modern world literature, London: Papermac, p. 1396, ISBN 978-0-333-42794-1, OCLC 248657649, retrieved 4 October 2010
• Chambers, Colin; Prior, Mike (1987), "John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy", Playwrights' progress: patterns of postwar British drama, Oxford: Amber Lane Press, pp. 20, 96, 146, ISBN 978-0-906399-81-1, OCLC 17420023
• Kershaw, Baz (2002), "Experimentation in the 1960s. The community dramas of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy", The Politics of Performance:Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention, Routledge, pp. 9, 92, 95, 98, 106–09, 124, 249, ISBN 978-0-203-41228-2, retrieved 4 October 2010
• Parker, Peter (1995), The reader's companion to twentieth-century writers (4th ed.), Fourth Estate, ISBN 978-1-85702-332-9, OCLC 468627139
• Sinclair, John M.; Wilkes, G.A. (1998), Collins English dictionary, Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-00-472218-4
• Cork University Press (2002), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vols IV and V: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions, Cork University Press, ISBN 978-1-85918-281-9

• "Margaretta D'Arcy". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Retrieved 4 October 2010.
• Biography at Margaretta D’Arcy official website (archived)
• Profile, Indymedia.ie
• Margaretta D'Arcy at IMDb