Shelah Richards

Shelah Geraldine Richards was born on 23 May 1903 in Dublin to John William Richards, a lawyer, and Adelaide Roper, a suffragist who had chained herself to the railings at St. Stephen's Green. Richards was educated at Alexandra College in Dublin before attending a finishing school in Paris. Although her family had no direct connection to the arts, her godmother was Beatrice Elvery, and Richards attended Elvery's salons with her parents as a child. It was at these gatherings that she first encountered W. B. Yeats, at the age of sixteen. Her niece, Geraldine Fitzgerald — daughter of her sister Edith Catherine Richards — would go on to become one of Ireland's foremost actresses.

Richards began her acting career through the Dublin Drama League. She was called upon at short notice to replace Eileen Crowe in the Abbey Theatre production of Juno and the Paycock, taking on the role of Mary Boyle. She subsequently played Nora Clithero in the Abbey's 1926 production of The Plough and the Stars, a role that required police protection throughout the run due to the public disturbances the play provoked. Another significant undertaking was the lead in The Player Queen by Yeats. Máire O'Neill had previously made the role her own, and Yeats had permitted no one to perform it since, making Richards's assumption of the part a considerable challenge. Alongside her acting work, Richards began directing in 1926.

On 28 December 1928, Richards married playwright Denis Johnston at St. Anne's Church in Dublin. The couple had two children: producer Micheal Johnston and novelist Jennifer Johnston. Richards toured the United States with the Abbey Players in 1932 and again with the Irish Players in the mid-1930s. In 1938, a role in Molly Keane's Spring Meeting — a production starring Gladys Cooper and A. E. Matthews — brought her to Broadway in New York. The European war broke out while the production was still running, and Richards was advised to remain in the United States, but she returned to Dublin because of her children. Her marriage to Johnston, which had broken down in 1938, ended in divorce in February 1945.

Richards's Broadway appearances spanned 1927 to 1938 and included Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, and Spring Meeting. Back in Dublin following her return from New York, she ran her own theater company at the Olympia Theatre with Nigel Heseltine. She later took over the Abbey School of Acting, where one of the designers she collaborated with was Louis le Brocquy. Working with Siobhán McKenna, Richards produced The Playboy of the Western World in Edinburgh to considerable success, which led to stagings in London, Dublin, and later at Toronto's Library Theater. She also brought Marcel Marceau to Dublin for the first time.

When Ireland launched its first television service, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, in 1961, Richards was among its earliest producers, having been recommended to the station by Hilton Edwards. She was one of the few women working at the new broadcaster. During the station's opening week, she directed the first Irish play to be produced, and she received a nomination for a Best Actress award for her performance in Inquiry at Lisieux. Her producing work at RTÉ encompassed documentaries, soap operas, and religious programming, including Tolka Row, The Riordans, Denis Johnston's The Moon on the Yellow River, Shaw's Arms and the Man, and Synge's Riders to the Sea.

Richards retired from RTÉ in the early 1970s, though she continued to raise funds for the Gate Theatre through the Edwards–MacLiammóir Playhouse Society. In 1983, the Abbey Theatre held a party to mark her eightieth birthday, at which a special rendition of "Nora" from The Plough and the Stars was performed; Richards was by then the last surviving member of the original 1926 cast. The same song was sung at her funeral. Richards died on 19 January 1985 in Ballybrack, County Dublin. Her funeral was held at St. Anne's Church in Dublin, and she was cremated at Glasnevin.