Editing Tom Murphy (playwright) (section)

==Life==
Murphy was born in [[Tuam]], [[County Galway]], the youngest of ten children.<ref name= OMahony>{{cite news |last= O'Mahony |first= John |date=7 March 2010 |title= Playwright Tom Murphy: 'There is a rage within me' |url= https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/mar/07/tom-murphy-the-sanctuary-lamp |newspaper= The Guardian |accessdate=19 October 2013 }}</ref> His elder siblings gradually emigrated to [[Birmingham]] until he was left alone with his mother.<ref name= Toibin>{{cite news |last= Toibín |first= Colm |date= Summer 2012 |title= Tom Murphy |url= https://bombmagazine.org/articles/tom-murphy/ |newspaper= Bomb Magazine |accessdate=19 October 2013 }}</ref> He played at centre half back for the Galway Vocational Schools [[Gaelic football]] team in the early 1950s.<ref>{{cite news|first=Jim|last=Carney|author-link=Jim Carney (poet)|url=https://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/why-have-football-and-hurling-remained-a-cultural-wasteland-for-our-writers-and-artists-39103123.html|title=Why have football and hurling remained a cultural wasteland for our writers and artists?|work=[[Sunday Independent (Ireland)|Sunday Independent]]|date=5 April 2020}}</ref> He attended  [[Archbishop McHale College]] in Tuam, was an apprentice at the Tuam Sugar Factory and later became a metalwork teacher at Archbishop McHale College.

He began writing in the late 1950s: "In 1958, my best friend said to me, why don't we write a play? I didn't think it was an unusual question, because in 1958 everyone in Ireland was writing a play". His second play, ''[[A Whistle in the Dark]]'', was written in his Tuam kitchen on his free Friday and Saturday nights. It was entered into a competition for amateur plays, which it won, and was eventually produced in London in 1961, having been rejected by the [[Abbey Theatre]].  

Though Murphy was religious as a boy, his 1975 play ''[[The Sanctuary Lamp]]'' was produced in the [[Abbey Theatre]] and received a hostile reception due to its anti-Catholic nature, with theatregoers walking out and much negative criticism in the media. After this controversy, Murphy worked as a farmer for some years.

Murphy died on 15 May 2018. He is survived by his wife, actress Jane Brennan, and his three children by his first wife Mary and a granddaughter. The President of Ireland [[Michael D. Higgins]] said: "The importance of Tom Murphy’s contribution to Irish theatre is immeasurable and outstanding. We have had no greater use of language for the stage than in the body of work produced by Tom Murphy since his earliest work in the 1960s."<ref>Clement, Olivia. [http://www.playbill.com/article/irish-playwright-tom-murphy-dies-at-83# "Irish Playwright Tom Murphy Dies at 83"] ''Playbill'', May 17, 2018</ref>