John Coulter
1888 - 1980
Belfast-born and Manchester-educated, Coulter spent most of his life in Canada. He taught in Wesley College, Dublin, from 1914 until 1919, during which time he was greatly influenced by Yeats's Abbey Theatre. He would later write about it as a model for Canadian theatre. He moved to London in 1920, where he wrote for BBC Radio. He moved to Toronto in 1936, where he wrote the majority of his 24 stage plays. His 'Ulster Plays' include The House in the Quiet Glen (1937), The Family Portrait ( 1937; alternatively, The Folks in Brickfield Street, or Stars of Brickfield Street), Holy Manhattan (1940), The Drums are Out (1948; premiered at the Abbey Theater), Deirdre (1965; based on an opera libretta from 1946), and God's Ulsterman (1971; a two-play sequence for radio).