Theatre director and co-founder of Druid Theatre Company, Garry Hynes, is to receive Freedom of the City from Galway City Council after it agreed to bestow the honour following a proposal by the city's mayor.
Mayor Brian Walsh said Ms Hynes had committed most of her life to artistic endeavour and her work had served the city in a very positive way. "Garry has put Druid and Galway on the map and has helped develop and cement Galway's international reputation as a leading centre of excellence for theatre and art."
Ms Hynes was the first woman to win a Tony Award for Best Director when the 1998 production of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane appeared on Broadway. She was a founding member of Druid Theatre Company in 1975 and was its artistic director from 1975-1991 and again from 1995 to date. She is also a former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre.
Her staging of all six of John Millington Synge's plays last year received widespread acclaim and they are due to open in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Minneapolis in June and at the Lincoln Centre Festival in New York in July. Her latest project, a new production of John B Keane's The Year of the Hiker, opened in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on Monday night.
Past recipients of Freedom of the City in Galway include John Hume, president John F Kennedy, Pope John Paul and Hillary Clinton.