ABSTRACT
Michael Declan Martin Donnellan was born on 4 August 1953, in Manchester, of Irish parents, who came from Roscommon. The family moved back to Ireland when he was four or five, then to London, where he attended St Benedict’s School in Ealing. Donnellan enjoyed performing in school plays and wrote his first play at the age of nine. He spent his summers in Ireland and remembers ‘winning second prize for the Irish jig at Roscommon Fair’ (Sierz 2002). In 1972-5, he studied English and Law at Queens College, Cambridge, where he met Nick Ormerod,1 his partner, in 1972, and
both men were involved in theatre as well as studying law. Donnellan was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple, but ‘even when I was at the Bar, I was in the Bar Theatrical Society, appearing in School for Scandal. So I never stopped acting as an amateur’ (Sierz 2002). In the late 1970s, Donnellan and Ormerod worked both separately and together at various fringe theatres, and formed Cheek by Jowl in 1981.
