Fierce Love: The Life of Mary O'Malley

Fierce Love is a compelling and candid biography of Cork-born theatre pioneer Mary OMalley, founder-director of Belfasts Lyric Players Theatre from 1951 to 1981. Neé Hickey, she went to Loreto Secondary School in Navan, Co. Meath, and became a key member of the New Theatre Group. She married Armagh-born psychiatrist Pearse OMalley and formed a fifty-seat studio theatre above the stables. She was elected to Belfast Corporation as an Irish Labour Party councillor and founded the literary magazine Threshold. Her other activities included running a drama school, an art gallery, and a music academy. She battled conservatism, socialism, and nationalism in a Unionist city and transformed Belfast with her playhouse, expanding her repertoire and bridging the political quagmire of the sixties to build a permanent 300-seater Lyric Players theatre, which opened with Yeatss Cuchulain Cycle in October 1968. Her fierce will survived the Troubles, ensuring that her broad-based community theatre never had to close its doors. Her vision was posthumously crowned by the 2011 Lyric Theatre building overlooking the Lagan.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2022
Publisher: The Lilliput Press Ltd

Fierce Love is a captivating and honest biography of Cork-born theater pioneer (1918-2006) Mary OMalley, founder-director of Belfast's Lyric Players Theatre from 1951 to 1981. Born Neé Hickey, Mary attended Loreto Secondary School in Navan, Co. Meath, where she wrote and directed her first play, The Lost Princess, before living with her mother in Dublin. There, she became a key member of the New Theatre Group, immersing herself in the city's social and cultural life and joining the Irish Society for Intellectual Freedom. On September 14, 1947, Mary married Armagh-born psychiatrist Pearse OMalley, later moving to Belfast's Derryvolgie Avenue off the Malone Road. There, she formed a fifty-seat studio theater above the stables and created Belfast Lyric Players Theatre, a company of actors and artists who were to put on 140 plays over seventeen years on a stage only ten-foot wide, asserting a broad Irish and European culture. W.B. Yeats, twenty-six of whose plays were performed, was her standard-bearer. In 1952, she was elected to Belfast Corporation as an Irish Labour Party councillor, and in 1957, she founded the literary magazine Threshold, which enjoyed a thirty-year lifespan. Her other activities included running a drama school, an art gallery, and a music academy, while raising a family of three. As she battled conservatism, socialism, and nationalism in a Unionist city, this courageous and tenacious woman transformed Belfast with her playhouse — Liam Neeson and Ciarán Hinds were among her protégés — expanding her repertoire and bridging the political quagmire of the sixties to build a permanent 300-seater Lyric Players theatre, which opened with Yeatss Cuchulain Cycle in October 1968. Her fierce will survived the Troubles, ensuring that her broad-based community theater never had to close its doors.

Weight: 500g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781843518549