Barry Cassin

Barry Cassin’s life in the theatre began in the days of the fit-ups when a company visited a different town every week and staged a different play each night. He directed the first productions of John B. Keane’s ‘The Field’, ‘Big Maggie’, ‘The Year of the Hiker’ and ‘The Matchmaker’. Barry also spent over 50 years as an adjudicator of amateur drama including 5 All-Ireland Fnials in Athlone, where he encouraged the careers of many fledgling actors including Aisling O’Sullivan. In the fifties, he ran the 37 Theatre Company, then operating from a basement in Dublin’s Baggot Street where he staged the first Irish production of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’. He returned to acting in the eighties in the Lyric Theatre Belfast in Graham Reid’s ‘Lengthening Shadows’, a career that continued into ‘Tarry Flynn’ in the Abbey, ‘Festen’ in the Gate, and Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Burial at Thebes’. He has appeared regularly in films including ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, and soon to be released ‘Byzantium’ directed by Neil Jordan. Barry lives near Balbriggan in North County Dublin, where he was married to his late wife Nancy for 38 years, with whom he had five children.