Irish Theatre and Historiography

Abstract

Irish theatre history, like Irish theatre, has for many years orbited around two centres: the writer and the Abbey Theatre. To some extent this continues to be both true, and for good reason. At the same time as Irish theatre culture has diversified, so too has scholarly writing about Irish theatre. There has been a distinct turn towards the study of performance in the twenty-first century, which is notable in an area that for so long had been dominated by the study of writers. In the same period, as Irish culture became more diverse, questions of gender identity, ethnicity, and multiculturalism have come into focus in new ways; and this in turn happened during a paradigm shift that has taken place across the humanities as a result of digitization. This chapter consider both the legacy of Irish theatre scholarship, and the new directions it has been following.