Gender Space and Collaboration Politics: Christine Longford’s The Furies (1933)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the context of intersectional gender economies, collaborative genealogies, and hierarchies of (in)visibility in theatre making, this inquiry turns to Christine Longford's little-known play-version The Furies (1933) to explore how gender exclusions, class privileges, and uneven dynamics of spousal joint authorship have historically been overlooked within modern Irish theatre history. By examining the trajectory of her partnership with the Dublin Gate Theatre's male artistic collaborators, i.e., her spouse Edward Longford as well as Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir (also known as The Boys), this study further attends to the ways Christine Longford created a space for herself within an androcentric/queer collective at the backdrop of the European avant-garde and the rise of fascism. Christine Longford's theatre work in 1930s post-independence Ireland countervails resonances about the political economy of intellectual agency in joint writing which make manifest a complex mosaic of uncharted women's spaces, labour, and biographies.