Fay Family History

Fay Family History

The Fay's first came onto the Irish art's seen in 1901 when Lady Gregory, together with W. B. Yates had completed a 3-year-long Irish arts project with asking the Fay Brothers, to found a company to support Irish artists.  The Fay Brothers founded and directed, W. G. Fay's National Irish Dramatic Company in 1902 and co.founded The Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1904, to create a home for Irish playwrights with The Fay Brothers also creating the first Irish national newsletter, The Arrow in 1906. The first independent national Irish Theatre company in a time before Ireland was independent and still part of the English Empire. The Fay's left the company with the other founders in 1909, after a list of ongoing issues with W. B. Yeats, who hijacked the companies original goals and the company license being withdrawn due to the fear of an Irish civil war with Yeats using the Abbey Theatre as a platform for his own personal and political goals with undermining the other founding members of the Abbey Theatre company in 1909. The Fay Brothers went on to Co. found the first MGM film company together with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, United Artists Film Productions, Los Angeles, 1919, and some years later, The Riverside Studios in London, 1933. In 2024, J. W. Fay founded a new national Irish film company to honour the legacy of his great, great uncles, The Fay Brothers, with a mission to save the Irish arts from larger financial businesses with the investors benefiting and not the Irish artists themselves. Fellow Irish Artists, Media Productions Limited, Working Together In Fellowship. The company aims to create two free public works and will run a GoFundMe campaign to gain public financial support to help us create future film projects together with Fellow Irish Artists.