THIS week, the Abbey Theatre announced its planned productions for its 2007 Season, revealing a host of world premieres and a Hollywood actor thrown in for good measure. The major coup for the Abbey next year will be the world premier of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and director Sam Shepard's play Kicking A Dead Horse, which will open in March. The play will star Oscar-nominated actor Stephen Rea, his first play in the Abbey for several years, although Abbey director Fiach Mac Conghail insisted this week that he was "not going down the star route".

"They [Rea and Shepard] worked together in 1974 in the Royal Court Theatre. Stephen has a relationship with Sam Shepard. I didn't go down the star route. Sam has written a play for Stephen, it's very natural for them to work together. The Abbey has reunited them. For me, Stephen has been a critic of Abbey in the past and he will be again in the future, which is a good thing. We need that."

MacConghail says he is looking at a lot of Sam Shepard's work over the next four years. "He's one of the heirs to Beckett and the work of his that I've looked at, funnily enough, says a lot about Irish life, family life and consumer society."

Another major production coming to the Abbey in February is Julius Caesar, directed by Jason Byrne, the artistic director of Loose Canon Theatre Company.

Byrne already has two groundbreaking interpretations of Caesar under his belt, and this time will be working with a cast of 34. Why did Mac Conghail pick this particular Shakespeare tragedy for the new season? "That play's one of my favourite plays and essentially it's about the consequences of taking political action. These guys assassinated Julius Caesar and never thought of the consequences." Mac Conghail says it's something that we can apply to modern-day political situations. "Whether it's Bush and Blair and Iraq or Fine Gael getting rid of John Bruton and Michael Noonan, they never thought of the consequences. Picking that play in the election year is interesting because there are characters that have to make decisions about loyalty to the state."

Politics is an undercurrent that runs through a lot of the Abbey's choices for the new season, , amongst which is Arthur Miller's The Crucible. "I suppose from my point of view as director, what makes us distinctive from other theatres is the Abbey was founded in an era of political, artistic and creative change, and every play I pick can be seen in a way as a political act. The Abbey affords me the opportunity obviously to entertain, but also to question and help our citizens and artists to look at what's going on in society."

While the Abbey has chosen plays, directors and actors that will doubtless draw big crowds, it will still take risks, says Mac Conghail, because that is part of its duty. Award-winning playwright and director Mark O'Rowe's play Terminus will have its world premiere at the Abbey in June.

"Our plays and productions can't be judged on box office alone, " says Mac Conghail. "I would be silly if I didn't engage with the audience. I do 11 productions a year and have two theatres, literary departmentf my job is to balance both the artistic side and balance the books, and we've done that this year. The fact is, if we do shows that audiences don't support, that's okay too, because we have to support the artists as well."

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