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 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.

Essays on contemporary Irish theatre

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights from the last 50 years whose work has helped to shape and define Irish theatre. Written by a team of international scholars, it provides an illuminating survey and analysis of each writer's plays and will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary Irish drama. The playwrights examined range from John B. Keane, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, to the crop of writers who emerged in the 1990s and who include Martin McDonagh, Marina Carr, Emma Donoghue and Mark O'Rowe. Each essay features: a biographical sketch and introduction to the playwright a discussion of their most important plays an analysis of their stylistic and thematic traits, the critical reception and their place in the discourses of Irish theatre a bibliography of texts and critical material With a total of 190 plays discussed in detail, over half of which were written during the 1990s and 2000s, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights is unrivalled in its study of recent plays and playwrights.

Essays on comedy in contemporary Irish theatre

This open access book is a new survey of theatre practices in Ireland from 1957 to the present. Part I: Histories, situates the theatrical activity of twentieth and twenty-first century Ireland within its social and political contexts, identifies key practitioners, landmark productions, institutions, festivals, and seminal revivals. Part II: Theories, offers five key theoretical frameworks - nation, language, body, space and interculturalism - to examine contemporary Irish theatre practices. Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance ultimately offers a more extensive story of contemporary Irish theatre documenting the diversity of practices and contributors that have populated the contemporary Irish theatre landscape since 1957.

By comparing the theatre of Samuel Beckett to more culturally specific Irish plays, the book establishes a greater international and theatrically experimental context for the field than has been recognised. Its three central chapters offer close and contextualised readings of the careers of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Thomas Kilroy across a span of more than four decades. The drama of Northern Ireland and its theatrical response to political violence receives sustained attention through a wide range of playwrights, including Frank McGuinness, Gary Mitchell, Christina Reid and Anne Devlin. A new chapter considers the work of such younger playwrights as Martin McDonagh and Marina Carr who emerged in the 1990s to probe the shortcomings of the 'Celtic Tiger' phenomenon.

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.

In A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama 1891-1980 (1984), the late Professor D.E.S. Maxwell states that the drama of J.M. Synge has 'an effect of language [to] disturb the apparent solidity of his stage's material accessories, to fantasticate and mythologise character into action.' In a sense, this is what all great drama does; through the use of the fantastic and the mythic, it disturbs the 'solidity' of the world as we know it. The works presented and discussed in this volume, show how the material of the everyday is transformed by the dreams of theatre makers, as we journey forth into the 21st Century. In writings by Marina Carr, Seamus Heaney, Olwen Fouéré, Terry Eagleton, Paul Murphy, Aoife Monks, Melissa Sihra, Conall Morrison, Mark Phelan, Eamonn Jordan, Brian Singleton, Lynne Parker, Rhona Trench, Stephen Regan, David Johnston and Donal O'Kelly we see examples of creative writing which engage critically with a world that is constantly changing, and examples of critical writing which engage creatively with theatre that is constantly evolving. This book is also a celebration of the vitality, originality and richness of theatre practice and scholarship on the island today. In Olwen Fouéré's 1999 production Angel/Babel, the millennial cyborg-figure says: 'The dreaming body lies at the core of everything and the metaphor of the dark is much richer and stranger than what is being talked about.' Theatre, indeed all art, is impossible without the dreaming body, whether it is the body of the performer, the playwright, the designer, the scholar or the director. Such creative impulses are at the heart of what this book seeks to explore. Theatre practice and scholarship in Ireland, North and South, has never been more vibrant and energised. This collection of writings offers a taste of the dreams and imaginings which have materialised on the island over the last forty years. The sixteenth volume in the Ulster Editions & Monographs Series.

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.