Perspectives On Contemporary Irish Theatre

This book addresses the notion posed by Thomas Kilroy in his definition of a playwright’s creative process: ‘We write plays, I feel, in order to populate the stage’. It gathers eclectic reflections on contemporary Irish theatre from both Irish theatre practitioners and international academics. The eighteen contributions offer innovative perspectives on Irish theatre since the early 1990s up to the present, testifying to the development of themes explored by emerging and established playwrights as well as to the (r)evolutions in practices and approaches to the stage that have taken place in the last thirty years. This cross-disciplinary collection devotes as much attention to contextual questions and approaches to the stage in practice as it does to the play text in its traditional and revised forms. The essays and interviews encourage dialectic exchange between analytical studies on contemporary Irish theatre and contributions by theatre practitioners.

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.

Essays on contemporary Irish theatre

This new edition of Anthony Roche's pioneering survey of twentieth-century Irish drama brings the story up to date with new material on the contemporary Irish theatre scene.

Analysing major Irish dramas and the artists and companies that performed them, Modern Irish Theatre provides an engaging and accessible introduction to twentieth-century Irish theatre: its origins, dominant themes, relationship to politics and culture, and influence on theatre movements around the world. By looking at her subject as a performance rather than a literary phenomenon, Trotter captures how Irish theatre has actively reflected and shaped debates about Irish culture and identity among audiences, artists, and critics for over a century. This text provides the reader with discussion and analysis of: Significant playwrights and companies, from Lady Gregory to Brendan Behan to Marina Carr, and from the Abbey Theatre to the Lyric Theatre to Field Day; Major historical events, including the war for Independence, the Troubles, and the social effects of the Celtic Tiger economy; Critical Methodologies: how postcolonial, diaspora, performance, gender, and cultural theories, among others, shed light on Irish theatre’s political and artistic significance, and how it has addressed specific national concerns. Because of its comprehensiveness and originality, Modern Irish Theatre will be of great interest to students and general readers interested in theatre studies, cultural studies, Irish studies, and political performance.

Exploring the works of Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Tom Murphy, and Thomas Kilroy, the author presents an introduction on the historical context of Irish culture, with particular attention being paid to the works performed in the 1990s.

This book investigates Ireland’s translation of interculturalism as social policy into aesthetic practice and situates the wider implications of this ‘new interculturalism’ for theatre and performance studies at large. Offering the first full-length, post-1990s study of the effect of large-scale immigration and interculturalism as social policy on Irish theatre and performance, McIvor argues that inward-migration changes most of what can be assumed about Irish theatre and performance and its relationship to national identity. By using case studies that include theatre, dance, photography, and activist actions, this book works through major debates over aesthetic interculturalism in theatre and performance studies post-1970s and analyses Irish social interculturalism in a contemporary European social and cultural policy context. Drawing together the work of professional and community practitioners who frequently identify as both artists and activists, Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland proposes a new paradigm for the study of Irish theatre and performance while contributing to the wider investigation of migration and performance.

The Irish Dramatic Revival was to radically redefine Irish theatre and see the birth of Ireland's national theatre, the Abbey, in 1904. From a consideration of such influential precursors as Boucicault and Wilde, Anthony Roche goes on to examine the role of Yeats as both founder and playwright, the one who set the agenda until his death in 1939. Each of the major playwrights of the movement refashioned that agenda to suit their own very different dramaturgies. Roche explores Synge's experimentation in the creation of a new national drama and considers Lady Gregory not only as a co-founder and director of the Abbey Theatre but also as a significant playwright. A chapter on Shaw outlines his important intervention in the Revival. O'Casey's four ground-breaking Dublin plays receive detailed consideration, as does the new Irish modernism that followed in the 1930s and which also witnessed the founding of the Gate Theatre in Dublin. The Companion also features interviews and essays by leading theatre scholars and practitioners Paige Reynolds, P.J. Mathews and Conor McPherson who provide further critical perspectives on this period of radical change in modern Irish theatre.