Twentieth Century Irish Drama

This work provides an overview of Irish theatre, read in the light of Ireland's self-definition. Mediating between history and its relations with politics and art, it attempts to do justice to the enabling and mirroring preoccupations of Irish drama.

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Exploring the influence of Shakespeare on drama in Ireland, the author examines works by two representative playwrights: Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) and Brian Friel (1929-). Shakespeare's plays, grounded in history, nationalism, and imperialism, are resurrected, rewritten, and reinscribed in twentieth-century Irish drama, while Irish plays, in turn, historicize the Subject/Object relationship of England and Ireland. In particular, the author argues, Irish dramatists' appropriations of Shakespeare were both a reaction to the language of domination and a means to support their revision of the Irish as Subject. This study reveals that Shakespeare's plays embody an empathy for the Irish Other. As she investigates Shakespeare's commiseration with marginalized peoples and the anticolonial underpinnings in his texts, the author situates Shakespeare between the English discourse that claims him and the Irish discourse that assimilates him.

This book traces a significant shift in 20th century Irish theatre from the largely national plays produced in Dublin to a more expansive international art form. Confirmed by the recent success outside of Ireland of the "third wave" of Irish playwrights writing in the 1990s, the new Irish drama has encouraged critics to reconsider both the early national theatre and the dramatic tradition it fostered. On the occasion of the centenary of the first professional production of the Irish Literary Theatre, the contributors to this volume investigate contemporary Irish drama's aesthetic features and socio-political commitments and re-read the plays produced earlier in the century. Although these essayists cover a wide range of topics, from the productions and objectives of the Abbey Theatre's first rivals to mid-century theatre festivals, to plays about the "Troubles" in the North, they all reassess the oppositions so commonplace in critical discussions of Irish drama: nationalism vs. internationalism, high vs. low culture, urban experience vs. rural or peasant life. A Century of Irish Drama includes essays on such figures as W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Christina Read, Martin McDonagh, and many more. Stephen Watt is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington, and author of Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage, Joyce, O'Casey, and the Irish Popular Theatre, and essays on Irish and Irish-American culture. He has also written extensively on higher education, most recently Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary for Higher Education (with Cary Nelson). Eileen M. Morgan is a lecturer in English and Irish Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is currently working on Sean O'Faolain's biographies of De Valera and on Edna O'Brien's 1990s trilogy, and is preparing a book-length study on the influence of radio in Ireland. Shakir Mustafa is a Visiting Instructor in the English department at Indiana University. His work has appeared in such journals as New Hibernia Review and The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, and he is now translating Arabic short stories into English. Drama and Performance Studies--Timothy Wiles, general editor

Exploring the influence of Shakespeare on drama in Ireland, Rebecca Steinberger examines works by two representative playwrights: Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) and Brian Friel (1929-). Shakespeare's plays, grounded in history, nationalism, and imperialism, embody an empathy for the Irish other. Irish dramatists' appropriations of Shakespeare, Steinberger argues, were both a reaction to the language of domination and a means to support their revision of the Irish as Subject.

This monograph explores the development of Irish drama in the 20th century and discusses recent cultural critiques of the entire enterprise of the Irish theatre. Rollins interprets Yeats, Synge, Beckett, Friel and McGuiness among others as practitioners in a kind of national reformulation of ritual and memory. This is one of the most thorough one volume discussions of the greatest century of Irish dramatic creativity and influence. "...I am impressed with the critical writing in Ronald Rollins's RUIN, RITUAL AND REMBRANCE. His scholarship focuses on Ireland's intricate history and Yeat's definition of maimed Irish space " great hatred, little room." Rollins deals with three playwrights, Sean O'Casey, Denis Johnston and the contemporary Frank McGuiness and their response to the nationalist uprising of 1916. Rollins points up after artful consideration of the older dramatists, the special relevance of McGuiness' idea that the Ulster rebels of pre World War 1 are the same as the Dublin rebels of 1916, the flip side of the coin. These writer see each denomination in Ireland as ordinary, half inspired, half bigoted human beings curiously united in their defiant rhetoric. The central thrust of the study is a consideration of the nationalist poet/playwright and leader Patrick Pearse as a man lost in the labyrinth of revolutionary rhetoric; in Rollins approach to McGuiness' THE SONS OF ULSTER MARCHING TOWARDS THE SOMME, Rollins argues the proposition that the character Piper is a counter figure to Pearse, similarly involved in the ritual chants of war, youth and death. The difference is that the real life Pearse shot by the British survives as an icon of Irish republicanism while the fictional Piper lives to see the Protestant house of Ulster crumble. Rollin's work is full of insights like this. Buy the book." ---James Liddy " ...highly recommended." Professor Robert Mahony-Catholic University of America

Generations of Irish playwrights have tried to assert the reputation of the stage Irish figure as other than comic, but each effort was in its turn assailed as buffoonery. Using post-colonial and performative theory, Buffoonery in Irish Drama demonstrates the ways the Irish struggled to create a sense of identity in a colonial structure, and it explores the distortion and appropriation of that new identity that elicit further calls to eradicate negative stereotypes. Demonstrating the pervasiveness of the reclamation efforts, Buffoonery in Irish Drama covers a wide range of well-known and obscure plays to show the trajectory of twentieth-century drama that brings us into a globalized twenty-first-century Ireland.

This book delves into how playwrights, whether canonical or less frequently discussed in the academic sphere, have critically and creatively engaged with the Anglo-Irish War, the Irish Civil War, the Easter Rising, the Northern Ireland Troubles and other conflicts. It not only approaches their plays--some of which have not been subject to much study--in relevant historical contexts, but also explores how Irish dramatists have observed humanity and resilience in war and given their insights into republican, unionist and denominational divides. It also reveals the dynamic mechanism connecting playwrights, performing venues, critics and audience members. As a whole, this book will be of interest to Irish studies scholars, theatre practitioners and historians, and people who would like to have a systematic understanding of twentieth-century Irish drama focusing on nation formation, war, revolution and humanity.