Billy Roche is an Irish playwright and actor. He was born and still lives in Wexford and most of his writings are based there. Originally a singer with The Roach Band, he turned to writing in the 1980s. He has written a number of plays, including The Wexford Trilogy. He has also written screenplay of Trojan Eddie and published a novel, Tumbling Down, and a book of short stories.
Career
The Wexford Trilogy
Roche is best known for the three full-length plays forming The Wexford Trilogy, all premiered at the BushTheatre in London, directed by Robin Lefevre:
The three plays were also directed by Stuart Burge for BBC television in 1993 with the original Bush cast members. 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."
Other work
;Theatre His dramatic work includes Amphibians ; The Cavalcaders ; and On Such As We. 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 . As an actor, he has appeared in Aristocrats by Brian Friel, The Cavalcaders, Trojan Eddie, Man About Dog and The Eclipse, a film based loosely on a short story penned by Roche. ;Films He wrote the screenplay for Trojan Eddie starring Richard Harris and Stephen Rea. ;Books Roche's literary work includes the novelTumbling Down. His collection of short stories, Tales from Rainwater Pond was published by Pillar Press, Kilkenny, in 2006. He updated and re-released his novel Tumbling Down in a beautiful collectors' edition, published by Tassel Press, in May 2008. ;Tutoring In 2005, Roche handpicked students from all over Wexford for tutoring. Together they invented the first 'Novus' magazine, which went on sale a number of days after the group disbanded. These students, who were tutored by Roche and his longtime friend Eoin Colfer, were the first in a long line of students under Roche's coaching. Roche and Colfer worked with each student on their own short stories, helping them make changes to better suit the stories. Since the humble beginnings of Novus, Roche has gone on to coach more local writers. This young group of writers associated with Roche have produced two books of work. Inked and Inked 2 are perhaps the best of what has come from Roche's tutoring work. In 2007 he was elected a member of Aosdána.
