Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School 2025

The third annual Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School will take place at the Thomas MacDonagh Museum in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary 17-20 September 2025. The museum, which commemorates the life of poet and patriot Thomas MacDonagh, will host a 4-day programme that includes writing workshops, an art exhibition, inspirational talks, interactive discussions and poetry readings.

The theme for this year’s programme is Political Theatre: Learning from the past? In a series of talks throughout the day on Saturday 20 September, the Hedge School will explore the concept of performative politics, and how politicians engage[d] in a form of spectacle to achieve their aims and harness support from the public. The talks will examine what we learn from the past, and whether these lessons are used to repeat the past or reform our future. This year is the 110^th anniversary of the Funeral of O’Donovan Rossa (1/8/1915); a significant event of political theatre that served as a rehearsal for the 1916 Rising. 

Tickets for the Hedge School 2025 collection of events are available now from Eventbrite –

http://bit.ly/4nHsUnw

Assistant Professor in the School of History, DCU, Dr Leeann Lane’s keynote address is titled ‘Hunger strike as republican performativity: Mary MacSwiney, Brixton, 1920, Mountjoy 1922, Kilmainham 1923’.

Williams Rossa Cole, great-grandson of O’Donovan Rossa will introduce his film “Rebel Wife: The Story of Mary Jane O’Donovan Rossa” and take questions following the screening.

James Moran, Professor of Modern English Literature and Drama, Faculty of Arts at Nottingham University, will deliver a talk on ‘The playwrights and 1916’. The presentation will feature extracts from plays, including The Plough and the Stars, which caused riotous disturbance at the Abbey Theatre when first performed in 1926.

In their discussion ‘Poetry and Politics: Plural Perspectives’ Dr Ailbhe McDaid and Prof Eugene O’Brien, of Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, will discuss how poets respond to different political events, and the symbolic (even theatrical) language of poetry to capture the past and current political upheavals.

Una Johnston, Hedge School Chairperson and Museum Director says this year’s programme will be ‘of great interest to anyone interested in drama – dramatic plays, dramatic poems, dramatic women and men, dramatic events – and their impact and influence on Irish culture and politics from McDonagh’s time to the present. Our inspiration was the 110th anniversary of the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa in 1915, and we are thrilled to welcome to the Hedge School, from New York, film director Williams Rossa Cole, the great-grandson of Mary Jane and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’.

The Thomas MacDonagh Hedge School 2025 received funding as part of the Creative Ireland programme with support from Tipperary County Council.