Ronán Noone

I am Ronán Noone. I work as a playwright and teacher. I believe the playwright is a guide who offers us a way to look at the world so we can tell stories that help us make sense of our world. A playwright asks questions of themselves and then writes a story for the stage. The story goes from the page to the stage and allows an audience to appreciate and recognize our beauty, our tragedy, our grief, and our humanity.

I have been writing plays for 20 years. After studying politics and mathematics at University in Galway (NUIG), Ireland, I began a writing career with a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism. Later, I immigrated to America and submitted my first play to Boston Playwrights’ Theatre at Boston University, USA and studied with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. Now I teach in that program.

As a teacher, I guide writers to search for the beating heart in their work; what fascinates them, what do they want to discover about the world we live in; and how to tell a story on the stage that offers an audience a better understanding of the world around them.

We discover how to develop full bodied characters with wants and desires. We look at the hurdles in their way and how to craft dialogue that sparkles while moving a plot forward. It seems like a big weight to carry, but playwrighting isn’t just about telling stories for the stage - it is about becoming a better writer. I teach how to critique with care, to rewrite using the pen as a scalpel, and to read and reread plays, screenplays, and tv pilots.

My play The Atheist played at the Huntington Theatre Company, Boston with Campbell Scott, and it had a production in New York city with Chris Pine. Other recent international productions have taken place in the UK (London and Edinburgh), Spain, India, Canada, the Philippines, and Ireland. My full-length and ten-minute plays are published by Samuel French, Smith and Kraus, Bakers Plays, Dramatists Play Service, and upcoming with Theatrical Rights Worldwide (TRW) Plays. Awards include Best Playwright Award at the 1st Irish Festival of New York (The Smuggler). The Second Girl was the inaugural winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Excellence in Playwriting Award and an Edgerton Award winner; the Boston Theatre Critics Association’s Elliot Norton Outstanding Script Award; and The Kennedy Center Michael Kanin National Playwriting Award; I have attended the Sundance Theatre Workshop and developed work at New York Stage and Film and The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida.

I am offering a course in Playwrighting that will show you a way to look at the world as a stage while learning the essential elements that go into writing a play. These elements can be used to develop stories in screenwriting and tv writing too. Come join me in this exploration-