Inseparable and No Longer Subsequent: The Relocation and Representation of Women in Irish Theatre Practices

Abstract

Women as playwrights, directors, designers and actors have played an indisputably integral part in cultivating the theatrical landscapes of Ireland, but their work, however, has largely been overlooked. That said, this is not a new lament: the last twenty years of Irish theatre scholarship have sought to redress this gender imbalance by looking to women's involvement in the ‘imagining’ of the Irish nation. Colm Tóibín's Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (Lilliput Press, 2002) famously confirmed Augusta Gregory's co-authorship (with W. B. Yeats) of Kathleen ni Houlihan (1902). C. L. Innes's widely known Women and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880–1935 (The University of Georgia Press, 1993), shed light on the ideologies behind the iconography of Mother Ireland, and Mary Trotter's Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2001) revealed the impact of Maud Gonne and the all-women society the Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin) on the development of the Irish National Theatre Society.