My father's great boast was that he had seen the original O'Casey plays at the Abbey. Whether or not this was true, he could certainly quote from them. My mother, however, had no time for O'Casey. Her hero was Shakespeare, and although I cannot recollect her boasting of productions she saw, I remember her well-thumbed Shakespeare Treasury.

She read, imagined and memorised from this wonderful, gold-leafed book and then, like my father, would quote liberally - and cuttingly - to make a point. When our parents argued, it often seemed more like a battle between Sean and William than between our father and mother.

Later, my parents went one step forward in our theatrical education by bringing us to see what was on offer at the Queen's, the Gate, the Royal or the Gaiety. Thus, at an early age, I saw the work of M.J. Molloy, Denis Johnston, Walter Macken, Pirandello and Wilde and the world of variety theatre everywhere else. In later years, I found my special favourites in the work of Hugh Leonard, Brian Friel and John B. Keane, and on trips abroad - all right, over to England - I discovered Osborne, Molière and Williams.

Thus a foundation of theatrical education was firmly, and subtly, established in my life. It was then that I attended two productions that told me maybe I should try to write for the theatre.

The first was Waiting For Godot at the Abbey in 1969, with Peter O'Toole as Estragon and Donal McCann as Vladimir. Then, in 1976, at the Peacock, I saw the Abbey Company perform Pinter's The Birthday Party. In each play was a cross-fertilisation of savagery and humour, unlike anything in my life's experience and yet, it seemed, now strangely revealed within me.

Seven years between each play and yet they are forever linked. I can only assume that, at each, I sat with the same open-mouthed attention, staring at a lit stage and welcoming the world into which I had been invited. And wishing, with little hope, that I could somehow create something similar.

If these two plays became the spark that lit the fuse, I'd like to think the smouldering started long before that - in my childhood of theatrical exposure, in the quote- infested arguments of my parents and in every magical moment when a curtain rose in a darkened theatre and offered me . . . escape.

•Lovers At Versailles by Bernard Farrell opens at the Abbey on Wednesday (01-8787222)