Dramatist John Millington ‘J.M.’ Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre with Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory. He is best known for his Broadway produced play The Playboy of the Western World (Maxine Elliott's Theatre).

Other theatre credits include his Broadway works The Well of the Saints, Riders to the Sea, and The Shadow of the Glen (Maxine Elliott's Theatre); his Off-Broadway works In The Shadow of the Glen and The Tinker's Wedding (Theater East); and his Ireland produced work Deirdre of the Sorrows (Abbey Theatre).

Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic commoners of rural Ireland. He made the folklore and dialect of the Irish peasantry the subject of his plays.