Michael West

Michael West is a playwright and translator. He has had a long association with The Corn Exchange, the independent Irish theatre company, with whom he collaborated on The Fall of the Second Republic (2020); The Seagull (2016); the first stage adaptation of Joyce’s Dubliners (2012); Man of Valour (2011); Freefall (2009, winner of the Irish Theatre Award and Irish Writers Guild award for best play); Everyday (2006); and Dublin by Lamplight (2004) which was revived by the Abbey Theatre in 2017.

Other work for The Corn Exchange includes parts of Car Show (1998); Foley (2001); and the stage adaptation of Lolita (2002).

He has translated versions of The Marriage of Figaro; Tartuffe; Molière’s Dom Juan; and The Tender Trap (an adaptation of La Double Inconstance by Marivaux). He has also translated Jean-Pierre Siméon’s Stabat Mater, and Forever Yours, Mary-Lou by Michel Tremblay.

His acclaimed translation of Death and the Ploughman, a 15th century Bohemian text, has been presented in Ireland, the UK, and was produced in the USA in 2004 by Anne Bogart’s SITI company. His adaptation of Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones was presented by Kilkenny Arts Festival in association with Rough Magic in August 2020 and played at the Abbey in 2022.

Other work includes FRNKNSTN with Theatre Lovett in 2018; Conservatory, which played at the Abbey in 2014; and a production of The Chinese Room, which premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2016.

He is published by Methuen.