Beyond the Pale: Neglected Northern Irish Women Playwrights, Alice Milligan, Helen Waddell and Patricia O’Connor

Abstract

This challenge, as laid out by Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart, has yet fully to be taken up by Irish theatre historians as the experience of women playwrights, producers and actresses continues to be subordinate to the dominant National(ist) meta-narrative of Irish theatre historiography. This chapter argues the need for Irish theatre studies to move away from the singularity of ‘nation’ as the dominant conceptual and organizational category of historiography and criticism, as such a paradigm shift can replace this singularity with a plurality of histories, restore the histories of numerous neglected women playwrights, and in the process rejuvenate the wider field of Irish theatre history. This chapter attempts to recover the histories of three women playwrights written out of the Irish canon: Alice Milligan3 (1866–1953), Helen Waddell4 (1889–1965) and Patricia O’Connor5 (1908–83).KeywordsFemale CharacterFeminist PoliticsIrish WomanIrish TheatrePolitical MessageThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.