“On the road: on the boards” – Irish plays and travelling theatre companies in colonial New Zealand, 1880–1895

Abstract

Irish culture came to many New Zealand towns as plays performed by travelling theatre companies. Between 1880 and the advent of the “picture show men”, there were regular visits to circuits such as “Gisborne, Napier, Palmerston, Wanganui, Hawera, New Plymouth, Wellington, Christchurch and all the more important towns southwards to Invercargill” by companies such as The Pollard Opera Company and The Greenwood Family. Some were highly professional, such as the Brough Boucicault Company, which only toured the major towns; others were more of the “fit-up” type, such as the Burford-Clinton Company, which featured Grattan Riggs. Touring was customary and could prove lucrative. Frank Norton, who was with the Dobson-Kennedy Company, once described New Zealand as a “country consisting of 51 towns and 43 theatre companies”. This article will assess the Irish contribution to Colonial life made by travelling theatre companies’ performance of Irish plays as evidenced by programmes, circuits, seasons and production values reported in the New Zealand newspapers of the day. It will argue that Irish plays performed the significant cultural and political functions of dramatising the uneasy tension between institutional power and individual potential that characterised the colonial condition in which New Zealand audiences found themselves.