UCD: the past, the present, the plans (1976)
Extract from ‘University College Dublin: The Past, The Present, The Plans’ (1976)
“There are approximately ninety societies and clubs which cater for the varied interests of students. Most societies draw their members from an academic faculty or subject discipline-e.g. Law Society; Medical Society; Electrical Engineering Society.
Debate at the Law Society
Two which do not and which reflect in their membership a wide cross section of the student body are the Literary and Historical Society and the Dramatic Society. The oldest society in the College is the Literary and Historical, founded in 1855/56.
The Literary and Historical Society, as its admirers have long claimed, and as others have been known to agree, is no ordinary debating society. It has had the experience, surely unusual among such societies, that it was established in one university and has survived through a second into a third. Its very meeting places attest the variety of its vicissitudes: besides a number of rooms and halls intra muros, they include the Ancient Concert Rooms, the Mansion House, the University Church and (surely as good a place as could be found to alleviate enforced exile) the Dolphin Hotel. Its membership has brought together men of diverse beliefs and principles, John Dillon and Thomas McDonagh, Arthur Clery and James Joyce, Rory O'Connor and Kevin O'Higgins. At one time or another it has heard the voice of almost everybody who has been prominent in modern Ireland; among them, Pearse and Mahatly, John O'Leary and Yeats, Tim Healy and Jim Larkin, Mr. de Valera and Mr. Cosgrave.
- From the introduction to The Centenary History of the Literary and Historical Society 1855-1955.
The Dramatic Society was founded in the session 1927-28. It got a somewhat reluctant presidential sanction to use the Aula Max. and to have that hall fitted with electricity. On the stage of the Aula Max. or in the little experimental theatre at the top of "86" several Irish actors first attracted the attention of the drama critics. It was at an extraordinary general meeting of the L&H that the decision to launch a dramatic society had been taken. Writing of those early years, Mervyn Wall says, "I hope, however, that the UCD Dramatic Society, whenever it finds itself naming with pride the dramatists, producers, scene designers and actors whom it has given to the Irish Theatre, will always remember that it stems from the older Society".
Over the years the Dramatic Society productions have been given in various locations in Ireland and England, including The Playhouse, Oxford, at the invitation of the OUDS and The Art Theatre, Cambridge.
A joint Dramatic Society and French Department production of The Killer, in the studio theatre at Belfield in 1975
Authors who have attended productions of their plays, include T. S. Eliot, who, in 1935, attended the Irish premiere of Murder it the Cathedral and forty years later, in 1975, Eugene lonesco, who came to Dublin to see a joint Dramatic Society and French Department production of The Killer, in the studio theatre at Belfield.
When it comes to be written, the history of the College's Dramatic Society will be an interesting one.