SAM McCREADY is an Irish actor, teacher, director, and writer. He is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, Stranmillis College, Belfast, and the University of Wales, and has successfully pursued careers in both the professional theatre and academia.

Formerly Head of Drama at Stranmillis, a constituent college of Queen's University, Belfast, he was at the same time a leading actor with the BBC and artistic director of the Lyric Theatre, Northern Ireland's most important professional theatre.

He emigrated to the United States in 1983, and made his American debut as writer, director, and actor in A Fantastic Voyage with W. B. Yeats, at the White Barn Theatre, Westport, in 1983. Since then, he has directed off-Broadway and in summer stock.

He was Professor of Theatre at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), 1984-2001, and artistic director of the summer touring program Shakespeare on Wheels, 1984-94. He was also an actor with the Maryland Stage Company, playing major roles in a number of classics. In September 2000, he received favorable reviews from the German press for his performance at the Berlin Festival of two late plays by Samuel Beckett, That Time, and Ohio Impromptu

Three of his UMBC productions: The Importance of Being Oscar, Spring's Awakening, and The Diary of a Scoundrel have been performed in the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C. as examples of the finest college theatre in the U.S.

He has maintained a directing schedule in the professional theatre in Ireland and has been guest director at American colleges. In November 2002, he will direct the premier of The Belfast Carmen, by Martin Lynch and Mark Dougherty, in the Grand Opera House, Belfast, an event that will mainline the prestigious Belfast Festival.

With his wife, Joan, he has performed the program Songs of Wandering Aengus, in venues throughout the world. Their next venture, a dramatic presentation on the life of John B. Yeats, the father of the famous poet, will premier in Ireland this summer.

To catch his latest US performance, make certain to attend Yeats's Gallery at the Folger Library Theatre, Washington D.C., 25 February, when he will read the poetry of W. B. Yeats, with commentary by Elizabeth Bergmann Loiseaux.

He has written articles on theatre for various journals and contributed to Notable Women in the American Theatre (1989). His bio-bibliography of the New York play producer Lucille Lortel, the Queen of off-Broadway (1993), and his A William Butler Yeats Encyclopedia (1997), have been published by Greenwood Press. He is currently working on a history of the theatre in Northern Ireland from 1968.

Updated 1 February 2002

E Mail: mccready@umbc.edu