21 Facts About Teresa Deevy

Teresa Deevy was an Irish dramatist and writer, who was deaf from the age of 19.

Teresa Deevy was born on 21 January 1894 in Waterford, Ireland.

Teresa Deevy was the youngest of 13 siblings, all girls.

Teresa Deevy's mother was Mary Feehan Deevy and her father was Edward Deevy who died when she was two years old.

However, that same year, Teresa Deevy became deaf through Meniere's disease and had to relocate to University College Cork so she could receive treatment in the Cork Ear, Eye, and Throat Hospital, while being closer to the family home.

Teresa Deevy started writing plays and contributing articles and stories to the press around 1919.

Teresa Deevy returned to Ireland in 1919, during the Irish War of Independence, and this greatly influenced her writing and ideology.

Teresa Deevy was strongly involved in the nationalist cause, and much admired Constance Markievicz.

Teresa Deevy joined the Cumann na mBan, an Irish women's Republican group and auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers.

In 1930, Teresa Deevy had her first production at the Abbey Theatre, Reapers.

Teresa Deevy's works were generally very well-received with some of them winning competitions, becoming headline performances, or being revived numerous times.

Teresa Deevy's plays were often quietly subversive, many being written just before or during the birth of the Republic of Ireland in 1937.

Teresa Deevy had a prolific output for twenty years on Radio Eireann and on the BBC.

The themes that are most common with Teresa Deevy plays are those where options for women are severely limited in society, where women are trapped by domestic life, or must choose between a loveless marriage or a life of drudgery.

Teresa Deevy was often critical of the intensely Catholic society she lived in for its oppressive and repressive views on women.

Teresa Deevy was critical of the Irish theater scene and especially of literary censorship, questioning the roles, rights, and power of the censor, and how to remove them.

Teresa Deevy wrote about the women who struggle for survival and the lust over wanting a better life, how this privilege might seem attractive, until it is revealed that the "better life" comes with its set of struggles too.

In 1954, Teresa Deevy was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters in recognition of her contribution to Irish theatre.

Teresa Deevy enjoyed renewed interest in her work from the mid-1950s onwards after Irish poet John Jordan published a study of her plays in the University Review in 1956.

Teresa Deevy returned to Waterford after the death of her sister Nell, with whom she had lived in Dublin and on whom she was very reliant as a lip-reading interpreter.

Teresa Deevy became a familiar figure in Waterford city as she cycled around the city on her "High Nelly" bike.