Daisy Bannard Cogley

Daisy "Toto" Bannard Cogley (born Jeanne Marie Desirée Bannard; 5 May 1884 – 8 September 1965) was a French-born Irish theatre actress, director, producer and designer. A socialist, she was active in the Irish War of Independence from 1917, and was interned during the Irish Civil War. She was an active figure on Dublin's theatrical scene for decades, as well as in Wexford and for a time London, launching multiple theatre and cabaret studios, and she was a co-founder of one of Dublin's main theatres, the Gate, of which she remained a director from 1928 to her death.

Life Early life Daisy Bannard Cogley was born Jeanne Marie (rendered in English as Johanna Mary) Desirée Bannard in Paris, France, studying acting and vocals at the Comédie-Française in Paris, and also at the Conservatoire de Paris in the very early 20th century. She then secured a job with the Theatre Antoine, and toured in provincial France. in 1914 Bannard Cogley variously referred to herself as Nóinín (Irish for Daisy) as well as the stage name Helen Carter when she acted in Edward Martyn's Irish Theatre Company on Hardwicke Street. She worked with the Dublin Drama League, and the Hardwicke Street Theatre Company, with whom she performed as Madame Ranevesky to good reviews, in the first Irish staging of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard as directed by John MacDonagh in 1919. She directed a production of Dorothy Macardle's Asthara in 1918, the first professional production of a play by Macardle.

Both Bannard Cogley and her husband were against the Irish Treaty and were interned at the same time during the Irish Civil War in Mountjoy and Kilmainham. including a study in 1930. Bannard Cogley began her cabaret evenings as part of the Cabaret Committee of the Radical Club. and in 1928. She and Ó Lochlainn had been discussing finding a more permanent theatre space when they met Edwards and Mac Liammóir (a long-term friend of hers), along with some mutual friends, in Bannard Cogley's club at 7 Harcourt Street, in spring 1928. After further meetings, the quartet rented the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre and launched the Gate Theatre Studio there on 14 October 1928. She also acted in the inaugural show of the Gate, Peer Gynt by Ibsen, in October 1928, and many other early plays of the new theatre, as well as participating in costume making. Notably, this theatre was also referred to as Madame Cogley's Studio Theatre and occasionally operated from the Gate Theatre throughout the 1940s. She was involved in a critical meeting in 1961, when the theatre was in severe financial danger - the meeting resolved long-standing splits within the Gate's structures, committed to future operations, and co-opted Desmond Guinness as a new director.

London Bannard Cogley's cabaret closed after she moved to London in the 1930s, frustrated with the increasingly conservative culture under de Valera, due to World War II, and participated in some of his mother's theatrical activities, including helping open the post-World War II Studio Theatre Club and acting in a play about a war between Ireland and a Northern Ireland from which the UK had withdrawn.

Bannard Cogley died at Mercer's Hospital, Dublin, 8 September 1965. In her obituary in the Irish Press and in some other references, her name was rendered as Johanna Mary Cogley. Her grandson was RTÉ broadcaster, Fred Cogley, Mitchel's son, and his son in turn was also a reporter, Niall. Although she had stated in 1955 that she was writing "my reminiscences of Ireland and the Irish theatre and all my friends", unlike many of her contemporaries Bannard Cogley did not actually publish a memoir or a collection of personal papers.