Modern Irish Theatre
Modern Irish Theatre

Author: Mary Trotter

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-08

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0745654479

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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.

Portia Coughlan
Portia Coughlan

Author: Marina Carr

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2023-11-09

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 0571389198

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Winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 1997. 'Carr's harrowing play has the scale and anguish of myth, and the immediacy of a contemporary anecdote.' Independent on Sunday There's a wolf tooth growin in me heart and it's turnin me from everywan and everthin I am. Portia Coughlan lives life in monstrous limbo, haunted by a yearning for her spectral twin brother lying at the bottom of the Belmont river, unable to find any love for her wealthy husband and children, seeking solace in soulless affairs, deeply afraid of what she might do. Portia Coughlan premiered on the Abbey Theatre's Peacock Stage, Dublin, in April 1996 and transferred to the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May that year. It was revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, in October 2023. 'Taut and haunting, funny and sad . . . Carr plays with time and place to resonant, ultimately devastating effect.' The Stage 'One of the most important Irish plays of the twentieth century.' Arts Review 'Marina Carr goes to a deep place that has not just to do with society now but that touches an inner tragedy of existence. The female quality of her writing comes through not only in the way she writes about women, it's in the physicality in her writing. She is right in there with the cycles of life, with the blood and the dirt.' Joyce McMillan, New York Times

Dance Theatre in Ireland
Dance Theatre in Ireland

Author: A. McGrath

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-12-03

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 113703548X

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Dance theatre has become a site of transformation in the Irish performance landscape. This book conducts a socio-political and cultural reading of dance theatre practice in Ireland from Yeats' dance plays at the start of the 20th century to Celtic-Tiger-era works of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre and CoisCéim Dance Theatre at the start of the 21st.

X’ntigone
X’ntigone

Author: Darren Murphy

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 1350335444

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Sometimes a person needs to create an act that destroys the world because the world is broken. The virus has ravaged Thebes. Millions are dead and the economy has tanked. Vaccinations have been administered and the Festival of Liberty is imminent. Things are finally about to change. The countdown is on but leader Creon and his quarantined niece, the self-identifying X'ntigone, have unfinished business before the celebrations can commence. What happens when old-world order meets a radical new world vision? In this thrilling meditation on Sophocles' timeless Greek tragedy, political expediency meets the voice of a generation who want to tear down the power structures that have ill-served a crumbling state. Darren Murphy's X'ntigone is a fresh and vital discourse for our times, when even truth has been sacrificed at the altar of political gain and avarice.

A Century of Irish Drama
A Century of Irish Drama

Author: Stephen Watt

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780253214195

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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

Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland
Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland

Author: Lionel Pilkington

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-22

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1134914652

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This major new study presents a political and cultural history of some of Ireland's key national theatre projects from the 1890s to the 1990s. Impressively wide-ranging in coverage, Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People includes discussions on: *the politics of the Irish literary movement at the Abbey Theatre before and after political independence; *the role of a state-sponsored theatre for the post-1922 unionist government in Northern Ireland; *the convulsive effects of the Northern Ireland conflict on Irish theatre. Lionel Pilkington draws on a combination of archival research and critical readings of individual plays, covering works by J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, George Shiels, Brian Friel, and Frank McGuinness. In its insistence on the details of history, this is a book important to anyone interested in Irish culture and politics in the twentieth century.

Navigating Ireland's Theatre Archive
Navigating Ireland's Theatre Archive

Author: Barry Houlihan

Publisher: Reimagining Ireland

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781787073722

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The historiography of Irish theatre has largely been dependent on in-depth studies of the play-text as the definitive primary source. This volume broadens the concept of evidential study of performance through the use of increasingly diverse sources, including annotated scripts, photographs, correspondence, administrative documents and recordings.

The Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre

Author: Christopher Fitz-Simon

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780500284261

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Dublin's Abbey Theatre opened its doors to the public on December 27, 1904. Over the course of the past century, it has survived fire, riot, and perpetual artistic disagreement to become one of the greatest theaters in the world, presenting over 740 new plays by some of the greatest Irish writers of the modern age, including W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, and Brian Friel. Christopher Fitz-Simon celebrates the Abbey Theatre's centenary by offering a witty chronological survey of the company's distinguished and colorful history. Beautifully illustrated with cartoons, sketches, and production photographs, The Abbey Theatre: The First 100 Years provides an overview of the great actors, directors, and playwrights of twentieth-century Irish theater, as well as detailing the company's long and illustrious relationship with American theaters and playwrights. It also contains a complete list of plays produced at the Abbey Theatre since 1904 and features a preface by its current artistic director, Ben Barnes. 200 illustrations, 20 in color.

Theatre and Ireland
Theatre and Ireland

Author: Fiona Shaw

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2010-07-30

Total Pages: 109

ISBN-13: 1350316164

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What is the significance of theatre and performance within Irish culture and history? How do we understand the impact and political potential of Irish theatre? This innovative survey of theatre in Ireland covers a range of drama and performance, from the 17th century to the present. Expanding the field of Irish theatre to include mumming, wake games, prison protests and theatre riots, the book argues that Ireland's longstanding association with performance illuminates key aspects of its cultural history and politics. Foreword by Fiona Shaw.