John MacDonagh (1879–1961) was an Irish film director, playwright, republican, and a participant in the 1916 Easter Rising. MacDonagh was born 4 October 1879 in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, where he grew up in a household filled with music, poetry and learning. Both his parents, Joseph McDonagh and Mary Parker, were teachers who strongly emphasized the value of education. He toured with the Moody Manners Opera Company in England and the United States before writing the script for D.W. Griffith's The Fugitive (1910).