A group of young people, led by two college graduates, Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen, and a VEC teacher at the beginning of his academic career, Mick Lally, team up to present a summer season of three plays in Galway.

On Thursday 3 July 1975, Druid welcomes its first ever audience to the Jesuit Hall on Sea Road for a production of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.

The season continues with Kevin Laffan’s It’s a Two Foot Six Inches Above the Ground World the following evening and Brian Friel’s The Loves of Cass McGuire the evening after.

The fledgling company quotes Tennessee Williams in the programme to accompany the season: "Make voyages. Attempt them. There is nothing else."

Through 1976, Druid continues to develop an audience in Galway for its evening performances but also its popular lunchtime theatre series (50p for a show and a sandwich).

Over the course of the year, they produce 10 shows including

• It Should Happen to a Dog by Wolf Mankowitz
• Countdown by Alan Ayckbourn
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
• Treats by Christopher Hampton
• The Pongo Plays by Henry Livings
• In the Glens of Rathvanna by J. M. Synge
• The Pot of Broth and Purgatory by W.B. Yeats
• Off Obie (a trilogy of American one-act plays)
• Happy Days by Samuel Beckett
• Mother Adam by Charles Dyer

Now in its third year of operation, the company pursues an ambitious and diverse programme of work including Tom Paine by Paul Foster, Birdbath by Leonard Melfi, There Are Tragedies and Tragedies by George Fitzmaurice, The Pursuit of Pleasure by Garry Hynes, The Promise by Aleksei Arbuzov and a Christmas pantomime.

Druid presents its first and last pantomime, Aladineen O’Druideen, at the Fo’Castle on Dominick Street in Galway, starring Marie Mullen, Seán McGinley and Paul O’Neill.

Druid participates in the inaugural Galway Arts Festival with a production of Chekhov's The Proposal.

Directed by Maelíosa Stafford, the cast includes Marie Mullen and Paul O'Neill.

In the winter of 1978, Druid presents the Irish premiere of Bar and Ger by Geraldine Aron, beginning a fruitful relationship between Druid and the Galway-born playwright.

Over the coming decades, the company would produce a number of Aron's other plays including A Galway Girl, Same Old Moon, The Donahue Sisters, The Stanley Parkers and My Brilliant Divorce.

In late 1978, the company sets about finding a permanent home for itself, somewhere to fit an office, space to rehearse and an auditorium big enough to accommodate their growing audience.

Up until then, Druid had performed in temporary venues such as the Jesuit Hall and the Fo’castle, a tiny function room at the back of the Coachman Hotel on Dominick Street.

Following meetings with managing director Donagh O'Donoghue, Thomas McDonogh & Sons Ltd agrees to lease a warehouse to Druid for a peppercorn rent of £1 a year.

The warehouse, located down a quiet lane over by the city docks, is later generously donated in full to Druid by the McDonogh family.

Through the winter of 1978 and the spring of 1979, the company works to turn the warehouse into a theatre.

On 19 May 1979, the theatre officially opens with a production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera.