Owen McCafferty lives and works in Belfast. He has been a playwright for over 20 years. Within that time he has had more than 20 plays professionally produced. His latest play Quietly (Abbey Theatre), about an attempt to reconcile a violent past, won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival and was voted best play at the Writers’ Guild awards in 2013.
Other work includes Scenes from the Big Picture (National Theatre), which follows the lives in an imagined area of Belfast over 24 hours. The play won the Meyer-Whitworth award, the John Whiting award and a London Evening Standard theatre award. Owen is the only playwright to win all three major awards in one year for the same play. Closing Time was also produced at the National Theatre.
The majority of his plays are set in his native Belfast and are written in local vernacular. A common theme is to look at the lives on the periphery of society and he is seen mainly as a post-conflict playwright. He is currently under commission to the Abbey Theatre and the Traverse.
