Billy Roche is best known for The Wexford Trilogy , a series of related plays about small-town Irish life that was first performed in its entirety at the Bush Theatre in London in 1992. Nothing much ever happens in Roche's plays: the characters plan and dream but always end up frustrated. They present a view of life that is reminiscent both of James Joyce's Dubliners (1914) and of Peter Bogdanovich's movie The Last Picture Show (1971)- appropriately so, for Roche's work draws from both the canon of Irish and European drama and the movies. His plays are never sentimental but are always realistic in their exploration of the limited possibilities of change for his characters. The language the characters use-a vernacular interlaced with poetry that is drawn from Roche's hometown-gives his plays their particular feel.

The youngest of six children, Roche was born on 11 January 1949 in Wexford, on the southeast coast...