John Arden (1930-2012) was a British dramatist, noted for his politically challenging and linguistically rich plays in the tradition of Brecht; he has written for radio and television as well as for the stage. After 1965 he collaborated on many works with his wife, the Irish playwright Margaretta D'Arcy.Arden's first professionally produced play was a radio drama, The Life of Mars, broadcast in 1956. In the late 1950s Arden was associated with the Royal Court Theatre, where his stark anti-war play Serjeant Musgrave's Dance opened in 1959. The play was something of a commercial failure at the time, but has been frequently revived since. It was during the 1960s that Arden produced most of his major stage works; these include The Happy Haven (1960), The Workhouse Donkey (1963), which concerns municipal corruption in Arden's native Barnsley, Armstrong's Last Goodnight (1964), which drew parallels between contemporary political events in the Congo and machinations in medieval Scotland, and Left-Handed Liberty (1965).In 1972 Arden and D'Arcy had a major argument with the RSC about the staging of their Arthurian play The Island of the Mighty. The argument culminated in Arden picketing the theatre and vowing that he would not write for the British stage again.He settled in Galway, Ireland, in 1971. He was elected to Aosdána in 2011, a year before his death.Margaretta D'Arcy was an Irish theatre practitioner who worked with improvisational and theatre techniques since the 1950s. Married to the late John Arden, she often collaborated with him, producing works such as The Happy Haven (1960), The Hero Rises Up (1968), The Island of the Mighty (1972), The Non-Stop Connolly Show (1975), as well as radio plays, Muggins is a Martyr (1968), The Manchester Enthusiasts (1984), Whose is the Kingdom (1988) and A Suburban Suicide (1994). Her Galway's Pirate Women, a global trawl tells the story of the pirate radio station she ran from her house in Galway. Other books include Tell Them Everything, a memoir of her imprisonment in the H-Block in Northern Ireland; Awkward Corners, essays, poems etc. She was a member of Aosdána, the arts organisation in Ireland. She died in November 2025.
