. "I've not problem as long as they're not in my backyard"

. "Violence is in their genes - that's the way they are"

. "Why should my taxes pay for that scum?"

. "They're all in bred, anyway. It's disgusting"

THE above are the comments of settled people about travellers. We've all heard them, spoken locally or on the airwaves. In spite of how politically correct we may think we are, many of us have said these things ourselves. They are part of the script of a new play, Rosie And Starwars, presented by Calypso Productions, which is about the relationship between the settled people and travellers, set in Ennis, Co Clare.

The play, which opens on Thursday, is written by Charlie O'Neill, whose parents ran a travelling fairground around Monster for many years, and whose grandmother was a fortune teller: "I see parallels between the nomadic, lifestyle my parents led and the life of the travellers. I find it fascinating." He is also very aware of the hardships involved. His father lost an eye in a horrific accident while working on the fairground. In the play, the eponymous Rosie wears a prosthesis. When she was a child she lost part of her leg after she and her father were ordered off a bus because they were travellers.

O'Neill feels it is particularly appropriate that the play is being performed in the first marquee to be erected in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar: "It was our (Calypso's) idea to put up a marquee. Tents are relevant to both travellers and to the Irish theatrical tradition, when the fit ups travelled around Ireland and performed in tents." He is at pains to dismiss any preconceptions that Rosie And Starwars is an issues heavy, indigestible piece of worthy theatre. His own theatrical background includes street theatre with Thorn McGinty, clowning with Raymond Keane (now of Barrabas), and performances in several Passion Machine shows. He also co wrote and performed (with Donal O'Kelly) Mulletman And Gullier, a hilarious late night two hander as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1991.

"Calypso is more about a journey of discovery than a flag waving destination, and for Rosie And Starwars I set out to write an inventive theatrical production that would provide a good night out," he explains. "Yes, it's about the rituals of the ethnic majority and the ethnic minority, and what happens when they collide. But it is also the telling of a human story along with the madness of hurling and land deals. The characters are complex and there are a lot of styles welded together in the script poetic monologues, Rosie's singing, the chorus. In the end, it boils down to six people making magic in a tent." Nevertheless, O'Neill does confess to being "steeped in issues". His "day job" is writing the copy for the Public Communications Centre, "a communications resource for progressive causes, encouraging and assisting non profit groups to examine and set up their agenda, identify their audience and claim the best possible media and strategies to influence that audience." Clients include Trocaire, Threshold and the Irish Nurses' Organisation.

Similarly, he set up Calypso with Donal O'Kelly in 1993 to tackle "issues of justice and fairness with a creative slant".

"The seed of Calypso came earlier, with the Parade Of Innocence. The campaigners for the Birmingham Six were doing a great job but we felt we could take it out of the world of activism and turn it into an amazing outdoor spectacle. We were conscious of designing pictures for the media, especially with the River Parade, when the EU summit was on and a lot of foreign journalists were in Dublin.

"WE realised the possibilities when you bring creativity to bear on campaigns. There are weapons of the imagination you can use to move or change people. The arts community can be very slow to use their skills in these areas." An exception is Roddy Doyle, in his TV drama Family. O'Neill sees Family as having made a valuable contribution to "a crucial cause": "Women's Aid are dealing with the problem of violence against women every day. Family had a compatible agenda.

Rosie And Starwars is Calypso's fourth production. Its first three plays Hughie On The Wires, Trickleedown Town and The Business Of Blood were written by Donal O'Kelly. Then came the prospect of the 1997 European Year Against Racism, and Rosie And Starwars was born.

"It's the first, full length, proper grown up thing I've written," jokes O'Neill. The play went through four drafts and numerous consultations with Gerry Stembridge, Peter Sheridan and Roddy Doyle, among others.

He is extremely appreciative of the financial backing given to the venture by a variety of organisations, including the Arts Council, the Irish Committee for the European Year Against Racism, the Combat Poverty Agency and the Peace and Reconciliation Fund. He also pays tribute to the immense help he received from travellers' groups such as Pavee Point. He singles out Michael Collins, the traveller actor from Glenroe, for special gratitude: "No way could I have researched this play without Michael's help. He brought me around countless sites and introduced me to many travellers living in all sorts of different conditions.

In order to replicate traveller idiom (rendered with great authenticity in the play), O'Neill recorded every conversation he had, and poured over the Pavee Point publication Traveller Ways, Traveller Words. A great moment of insight occurred during a session with a group of women in Pavee Point.

"One of the women asked me whether, as part of my research for the play, I had interviewed any settled people. That one comment changed my whole approach. I assumed that I knew what settled people thought. I began to listen more to the views of settled people. I got very depressed by their baggage about travellers which springs from ignorance of this other culture, this different ethnic identity." The central character of Rosie is based on a traveller woman he met and interviewed extensively: "She came to hear a reading of the play. I was dead nervous but she was delighted with it," says O'Neill. "She had written a diary that had been destroyed in a fire, so I knew that in some way, she wanted her story heard."

WITH the final, complex twist at the end of the play (involving the rescue of a boys from a burning caravan). O'Neill manages to avoid the easy option of painting the travellers as heroes, and the settled people in Ennis who try to burn them out as "racist monsters".

"Each character has deep things to tell about themselves. There are no heroes and no monsters just people, some of whom are capable of making huge journeys; others who are filled with anger and a sense that they can't cope with their own lives." There is also a deal of humour, based on fanatical Clare hurling supporters, and on the cross cultural learning experiences of Rosie and Seanie (who is settled) as they fall in love:

Rosie: Shut up - we don't have much time.

Seanie: Why?

Rosie: My life expectancy is only 80 per cent a yours.

O'Neill's original training is in graphic design. In the 1980s, he and Jole Bortoli and Gian Carlo Ramaioli set up the Graphiconies: "It was like an Italian circus design family," he recalls. The company revolutionised Irish graphic design in the realm of theatre, creating most of Rough Magic's memorable posters as well as posters for the Abbey, the Dublin Street Carnival and the Parade Of Innocence.

In 1989 O'Neill worked in San Francisco with Public Media Center - "America's leading advocacy agency for progressive causes - and on his return, the Graphiconies began to evolve into the Public Communications Centre, which now employs 12 people and describes itself as "at the centre of creative activism". Meanwhile, undeterred by the amount he already has to juggle, what with his Calypso commitments and the day job, O'Neill already wants to branch into yet another medium. He is hoping to write a screenplay based on his fairground childhood - "a visual feast" - for Siobhan Bourke's film company. That motive to create magic in a tent may yet find its way onto the wide screen.