After the depredations of the war-time years and a devastating fire in the Abbey Theatre in 1951, the Radio Éireann Players' powerful weekly performances inspired interest in drama throughout the country.
[1] Under Director Dr. T. J. Kiernan (husband of Delia Murphy, appointed 1935), Radio Éireann had already started broadcasting plays from the Abbey and Peacock theatres in Dublin and the Taibhdhearc in Galway.
[3] The founding actors (plus three who joined the following year) were: Tom Studley, George Greene, Éamonn Kelly, Joe Lynch, Arthur O'Sullivan, Pegg Monahan, Laurence O'Dea, Frank O'Dwyer, Christine Spencer, Ginette Waddell, Marie Mulvey, Gerard Healey, Leo Leyden, Charles McCarthy, Deirdre O'Meara, Una Collins, Seamus Forde, Charles Davis, Ronald Ibbs, Florence Lynch, Mairín Ní Shuilleabháin, Joseph O'Dea, Christopher Casson, John Stephenson and Aiden Grennell.
Adapted and produced by Mícheál Ó hAodha, it was written by Galway author Seamus O'Kelly, and won the coveted Prix Italia for Radio Drama.
The players attracted international attention in 1982 when they broadcast an uninterrupted, unabridged, 30-hour dramatised performance of James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses, to commemorate the centenary of the author's birth.