New Work on Modern Irish Drama and Theater, 1997–2002: An Overview

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NEW WORK ON MODERN IRISH DRAMA AND THEATER, 1997–2002: AN OVERVIEW JOYCE FLYNN BOOK-LENGTH CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL STUDIES: Grene, Nicholas. The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Harrington, John P. The Irish Play on the New York Stage, 1874–1966. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997. Mac Anna, Tomás. Fallaing Aonghusa: Saol Amharclainne. Baile Atha Cliath: An Clochomhar Tta, 2000.1 McDonald, Ronan. Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Morash, Christopher. A History of Irish Theatre, 1601–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Murray, Christopher. Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Pilkington, Lionel. Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People. London: Routledge, 2001. Rattigan, Dermot. Theatre of Sound: Radio and the Dramatic Imagination. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2002. Richards, Shaun. The Drama of Ireland: An Infinite Rehearsal. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming.2 NEW WORK ON MODERN IRISH DRAMA AND THEATER, 1997–2002 231 1 An autobiography for the last half-century of Irish theater. 2 The title was originally announced for publication in December 2001, but it remains unpublished as this essay goes to press. Trotter, Mary. Ireland’s National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001. Welch, Robert. The Abbey Theatre, 1899–1999: Form and Pressure. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ILLUSTRATED THEATER HISTORY STUDIES: O’Neill, Michael J. The Abbey at the Queen’s: The Interregnum Years 1951–1966. Nepean, Ontario: Borealis, 1999. Ryan, Philip B. The Lost Theatres of Dublin. Westbury, Wiltshire: Badger Press, 1998. ANTHOLOGIES OF CRITICISM AND THEATER HISTORY: Bolger, Dermot, ed. Druids, Dudes, and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre. Dublin: New Island Press, 2002. Chambers, Lilian, Ger Fitzgibbon, and Eamonn Jordan, eds. Theatre Talk: Voices of Irish Theatre Practitioners. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2002. Harrington, John P., and Elizabeth J. Mitchell, eds. Politics and Performance in Contemporary Northern Ireland. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press in cooperation with American Conference for Irish Studies, 1999. Jordan, Eamonn. Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2000. Kamm, Jurgen, ed. Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama in English: Festschrift for Heinz Kosok on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1999. Watt, Stephen, Eileen Morgan, and Shakir Mustafa, eds. A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. REFERENCE WORKS FOR SPECIFIC AUDIENCES: Deegan, Loughlin, ed. The Irish Theatre Handbook. Dublin: The Theatre Shop, 1998. NEW WORK ON MODERN IRISH DRAMA AND THEATER, 1997–2002 232 ___, ed. The Irish Theatre Handbook, 2nd ed. Dublin: The Theatre Shop, 2001. Shrank, Bernice, and William B. Demastes, eds. Irish Playwrights, 1880–1995: A Research and Production History. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997. Sternlicht, Sanford V. A Reader’s Guide to Modern Irish Drama. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1998. ANTHOLOGIES OF CONTEMPORARY PLAYS: Bourke, Siobhán, ed. Rough Magic: First Plays. Dublin: New Island Books, 1999. Culleton, Jim, ed. Fishamble/Pigsback Plays. Dublin: New Island Books, 2002. Fairleigh John, ed. Far from the Land: Contemporary Irish Plays. London: Methuen, 1998. Friel, Judith, and Sanford Sternlicht, eds. New Plays from the Abbey Theatre, Vol. 2 (1996–98). Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2001. Greatest Hits: Four One-Act Plays. Dublin: New Island Books, 1997. Leeney, Cathy, ed. Seen and Heard: Six New Plays by Irish Women. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2001. McGuinness, Frank, ed. The Dazzling Dark. London: Faber & Faber, 1997. The title of Dermot Bolger’s critical anthology Druids, Dudes, and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre proclaims how far Irish theater has traveled from the foundational texts of early Abbey Theatre directors W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and John Millington Synge. Playwriting and theater production have transformed themselves as rapidly as Ireland itself, so that Irish theater in the 1990s and after seems a culture away from the plays of the 1970s—not to speak of the 1940s or the beginnings of the Irish dramatic movement in the early decades of the century. Buoyed in part by the spectacular growth of the Irish economy, in part by a confident cultural self-definition spanning the north...