The Plough and the Stars #1: Arthur Shields and the 1916 Easter Uprising

Scan of original playbill of The Plough and the Stars

Kitty Curling was a member of the Abbey Theatre company from 1926 to 1933. She was about 19 when she made her debut in a one act comedy called Apartments. According to the theatre's archivist Mairead, it's possible and maybe probable that because of Kitty's age she was a product of the company's acting school.

Her second show solidified her place in theater history. Kitty was cast as Mollser in Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars. The play, which completes O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy takes place in a tenement building between November 1915 and the 1916 Easter Uprising.

Last month I sat down with the Abbey's archivist to talk about Kitty's career and I'm working on putting the audio I recorded of that conversation into a photoslide video for my Aunt Ann.




For perspective, today The Plough and the Stars is one of the most important pieces of Irish theatre. It is among the pantheon of Irish plays - which some would argue would put it among the pantheon of modern theatre. It is a loved piece of drama produced for the first time in the Irish Free State by free Irishmen and women for Irishmen and women. But the original production, the 1926 premier featuring Eileen Crowe, Barry Fitzgerald, Ria Mooney, Arthur Shields and Kate "Kitty" Curling was scandalous in it's day. It was so scandalous that the February 11th production caused a riot, instigated by members of Cumann na mBan and Sinn Fein (who were there at the invitation of WB Yeats).

Famously, Yeats yelled at the crowd and compared them to a rioters who had interrupted a 1907 production of Playboy of the Western World, "I thought you had tired of this, which commenced fifteen years ago. But you have disgraced yourselves again. Is this going to be a recurring celebration of Irish genius? Synge first and then O'Casey."

Shields (far left) in 1926 production of Plough

All of that informed my revelation tonight while searching for some photos to supplement the ones Amazing Librarian and I took at the theatre, I found this photo of Arthur Shields. Shields was a member of the Abbey Theatre from  1914 until 1939, he was also an Irish republican and a member of the Irish Citizens Army fighting in the 1916 Easter Rising. Shields served with Patrick Pearce at the General Post Office, which served as the rebel's headquarters for the week long insurrection.

Upon surrender he was part of the contingent that was taken to and held at Frongoch internment camp in Wales for six months. When, according to one obituary, "upon his release he was decorated by the Republic of Eire."

In 1926 the Easter Rebellion was lauded and it's leaders revered. It was also very recent and raw memory for the women of the Cumann na mBan and other Feinners who served alongside the likes of Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera. What's interesting is that the play itself isn't a flowery love story to the rebellion. It tells the story of the toll that was taken on the women in the lives of the volunteers. 

As a post script, Shields moved to Hollywood, as did many of this era's class of Abbey players. Many were lured away because Europe was entering World War II and Ireland was struggling to stand up on it's own. Shields had an incredible film and television career which included the 1937 film adaptation of The Plough and the Stars, and The Quiet Man, which featured one of Kitty's friends, Maureen O'Hara opposite John Wayne.

To bring the story back to Kitty and the Wall family, it made me very proud to know that Kitty was in the middle of all of these political and cultural events in Irish history.