Druid initially moved between a number of Galway venues and sites in its early years, including the Jesuit Hall (known locally as the ‘Jes’) and the Fo’Castle, without any one considered as a base. Then in 1977 Druid weighed anchor in the Fo’Castle when they negotiated an occupancy with the local hotelier who owned it and made from a small space at the back of his hotel a 47-seat studio theatre.

The Fo’Castle Theatre perfectly suited the company’s determination to create work for a non-pros arch space and became an important formative influence on Druid’s emergent style.

By late 1978, however, with the ensemble expanding to include actors Seán McGinley, Maelíosa Stafford and others, and with The Arts Council/An Comhairle Ealaíon and local authority funding steadily increasing, the company began in earnest to search for a larger, more serviceable dedicated theatre space, where they would not only present their work but create it and give it administrative support.

In late 1978 Druid secured the lease on a disused tea warehouse in what was then an abandoned and rundown part of Galway. The lease was generously given by Thomas McDonogh (the senior member of one of Galway’s leading merchant families), on favourable terms for the company. The Joint Managing Director for the McDonagh family business, Donagh O’Donoghue, was instrumental in the negotiations for the lease and would, rather tellingly, only a few years later become the first chairman of Druid’s board.

The company immediately began work on converting the warehouse into a 110-seat theatre – the work of conversion, including all design, building, carpentry, electrical (with the supervision of an electrical engineer) and other work, being undertaken by the members of the company themselves apart from a plumber who was the only external tradesman employed for the conversion. A production of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera was the inaugural production on 19th May 1979, six months later.

Providing a base not only for its productions but also for its rehearsals and administration activities – in early 1980, Druid were enabled to appoint its first full-time administrator, Deirdre Murphy – the Druid Lane Theatre has proven to be the creative workshop in which all Druid’s work is conceived and rehearsed and the foundry for Druid’s mature identity. It continues in this capacity to this day.

The premises were donated to Druid in 1996 by Thomas Mc Donogh & Sons to mark the company’s 21st birthday. Then in 2009 the venue received a major refurbishment, funded by the Department of Arts, Sport & Tourism, Galway City Council and private donation. The refurbishment sees the footprint of the performance space retained but additional space found for the foyer downstairs and rehearsal space and dressing rooms upstairs. In addition the venue gains a flexibility for presenting work throughout its infrastructure.

We might look to the Anteaus myth – the story of a giant who regains his strength with every contact he makes with the earth – to understand the importance of Druid Lane Theatre for the company: it is the space in which the company feels enabled to take artistic risks and from which it draws the strength to create work for audiences locally, nationally and internationally.