Tom Murphy (23 February 1935 – 15 May 2018) was an Irish dramatist who worked closely with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and with Druid Theatre, Galway. He was born in County Galway, Ireland and later lived in Dublin. Murphy's first successful play, A Whistle in the Dark, was performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London in 1961 and caused considerable controversy both there and in Dublin when it was later given its Irish premiere at the Abbey having initially been rejected by its artistic director. Life Murphy was born in Tuam, County Galway, the youngest of ten children. His elder siblings gradually emigrated to Birmingham until he was left alone with his mother. He played at centre half back for the Galway Vocational Schools Gaelic football team in the early 1950s. He attended Archbishop McHale College in Tuam , was an apprentice at the Tuam Sugar Factory and later became a metalwork teacher at Archbishop McHale College. He began writing in the late 1950s: "In 1958, my best friend said to me, why don't we write a play? I didn't think it was an unusual question, because in 1958 everyone in Ireland was writing a play". His second play, A Whistle in the Dark, was written in his Tuam kitchen on his free Friday and Saturday nights. It was entered into a competition for amateur plays, which it won, and was eventually produced in London in 1961, having been rejected by the Abbey Theatre. Though Murphy was religious as a boy, his 1975 play The Sanctuary Lamp was produced in the Abbey Theatre and received a hostile reception due to its anti-Catholic nature, with theatregoers walking out and much negative criticism in the media. After this controversy Murphy worked as a farmer for some years. Murphy died on 15 May 2018. He is survived by his wife, actress Jane Brennan and his three children by his first wife Mary and a granddaughter. The President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins said: "The importance of Tom Murphy’s contribution to Irish theatre is immeasurable and outstanding. We have had no greater use of language for the stage than in the body of work produced by Tom Murphy since his earliest work in the 1960s." Writing career Considered by many to be one of Ireland's greatest playwrights, Tom Murphy was honoured by the Abbey Theatre in 2001 by a retrospective season