‘How to be the perfect Romantic Poet: be born male.’ LIZ LOCHHEAD When the TLS asked me to review Charlotte Headrick and Eileen Kearney’s Irish Women Dramatists earlier this year, I did some research into the commissioning of female playwrights in Irish theatre companies. I contacted Patrick Lonergan of NUI Galway who sent me some statistics about the Abbey. Suffice to say, I was gobsmacked: since the new Abbey Theatre building opened in Dublin in 1966, six plays on the main Abbey stage have been written by women - Edna O’Brien, Jeanne Binnie, Elaine Murphy, three plays by Marina Carr. That’s a total of four women commissioned, compared to approximately 320 plays staged during this period that were penned by men. I wrote a longer feature than I was commissioned to write and the TLS decided to publish. They are shocking stats but they are in keeping with stats on female playwrights in the UK and US, though the Irish figures have not improved more recently as they’...