As Michael Billington has noted, the 1980s were not a good decade for new dramatists and one can point to only a handful who made any significant mark.
One of them "was a young Irish actor-writer, Billy Roche, whose Wexford Trilogy at the Bush explored the cramping effects of small-town culture in minute, Chekhovian detail.
After a long absence as a playwright, Roche wrote Lay Me Down Softly, set in a travelling boxing ring "somewhere in Ireland", which received its first performance at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin in November 2008 [1].
Along with and producer Actor Peter McCamley, Billy Adapted, directed and Tour in a One-man Stage Version of his novella ‘The Diary of Maynard Perdu’, 2017–2019.
He wrote the screenplay for Trojan Eddie (Film Four/Irish Screen, 1997) starring Richard Harris and Stephen Rea.