This book presents new insights into the production and reception of Irish drama, its internationalisation and political influences, within a pivotal period of Irish cultural and social change. From the 1950s onwards, Irish theatre engaged audiences within new theatrical forms at venues from the Pike Theatre, the Project Arts Centre, and the Gate Theatre, as well as at Ireland’s national theatre, the Abbey.
Drawing on newly released and digitised archival records, this book argues for an inclusive historiography reflective of the formative impacts upon modern Irish theatre as recorded within marginalised performance histories. This study examines these works' experimental dramaturgical impacts in terms of production, reception, and archival legacies. The book, framed by the device of ‘archival memory’, serves as a means for scholars and theatre-makers to inter-contextualise existing historiography and to challenge canon formation. It also presents a new social history of Irish theatre told from the fringes of history and reanimated through archival memory.
Author(s): Barry Houlihan
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 275
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: Towards an Archival Memory—Performance and Archive
Can We Witness (or Rewitness) Theatre History?
Modernising Ireland—Society, Class and Experimental Form
Constructing Archival Memory: Reclaiming the Record, Reinterpreting Historiography
Theories of Social Remembering—Memory and Political Resonances
Remembering Irish Theatre—Political and Historiographical Problems
Internationalisng Irish Theatre Post-1951: Influences, Resonances and Archival Legacies
Culture and Gender on the Modern Irish Stage—A Feminist Archival Lens
Chapter 2: Performing the Family: Law and the State
Women and Cultural Production: Breaking the Domestic Fourth Wall
Gender and Performing Roles in Ireland—Finding Voice
Women, Ireland and Disrupting the Social Order
Carolyn Swift—Throwing off ‘The Millstone’
Carolyn Swift and Establishing the Pike Aesthetic
Production and Reception—The Millstone, Childhood Adoption and Irish Society of the 1950s
“A Most Alarming Thing”—Edna O’Brien and Staging a ‘Pagan Ireland’
Reception of A Pagan Place—The ‘Playwright on the Stairs’ and the Psychological Choke
Conclusion—Archival Memory of Absent Women
Chapter 3: Internationalising Irish Drama: A Global Stage
Siobhán McKenna and Hamlet’s Irish Voice
Locating a New Irish Drama—‘Ireland on Stage’
The Globe Theatre and Genevieve Lyons—A New Irish Theatre
Returning Home: Yanks and Country Boys—The Changing Irish Homeplace
Addressing Youth Culture in Post-Emergency Ireland
The Country Boy and Staging Modernising Ireland
Conclusion
Chapter 4: The Pike Theatre and Intercultural Ireland
Further Follies and Cultural Exchanges: Say It with Follies, 1956–1957
The Pike Follies and Irish Trade—Irish Culture Inc.
Follies in the Sun: The Emerald Isle and the Caribbean
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Radical Dramaturgies: Censorship and Dramatic Expression
Links to Theatre Movements in Great Britain
Theatre, Ireland and the 1950s: New Beginnings
The Catholic Church, Censorship and Monitoring of Irish Theatre
The Birth of The Ginger Man and Ireland’s Look Back in Anger
The Ginger Man and Staging Domestic Conflict
Archival Memory and Evidence: Recovering The Ginger Man— Censorship and Reception
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Staging the Memoryscape of Middle-Class Ireland
Leonard and the Irish Canon—The Outsider and an Uneasy Relationship
Becoming ‘Hugh Leonard’
Leonard’s New Ireland and Losing the Land
The Arrival of Hugh Leonard
A Walk on the Water—Escaping Society and the City
Summer—Place, Heritage and Landscape
‘Unreal City’—Leonard and Encountering Memory
Conclusion
Chapter 7: 1970s Ireland: Performing the Immersive Political
Lelia Doolan: ‘Bringing Theatre to the People’
Project Arts Centre: A New Artists Co-operative
New Irish Plays at Project: Plays Very Unpleasant
We’re Guilty ‘Cause We’re Filthy: Project Arts Centre and Censorship
Ireland and the Post-colonial Present: Famine and the ‘Black Man’s Country’
Famine and Ireland: An Embodied Repository of Memory
‘Black Man’s Country’: Irish Missions and Diplomacy
‘Ethiopian with a Touch of Yeats’: Oda Oak Oracle and African-Irish Verse Drama
Documentary Theatre and the Immersive Political: Joint Stock and Speaker’s Corner
Documentary and Commemoration: Staging the Politics of Memory
Healing and Violent Identifies: Graham Reid and Protestant Identity at the Abbey Theatre
The Politics of Bodies: Staging Fragility in/from Conflict
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Conclusions: Memory and the Periphery in Irish Drama
Bibliography
Archive and Primary Sources
Newspapers and Periodicals
Books and Articles
Index
