Irish Drama Research Articles

A Letter from Eugene O'Neill to Patrick McCartan (June 11, 1934); or, Yeats, the Abbey Theatre, and Days Without End (April 16, 1934)

A Letter from Eugene O'Neill to Patrick McCartan (June 11, 1934); or, Yeats, the Abbey Theatre, and <i>Days Without End</i> (April 16, 1934)

Пьеса У.Б. Йейтса «Там, где ничего нет» и ее толстовское измерение

The article discusses the issue of the influence of Leo Tolstoy, his fiction and non-fiction, on William Butler Yeats's drama in the broader context of Tolstoy's reception in the late 19th - early 20th century in both Russia and the United Kingdom. Tolstoy's image as a writer in the correspondence and non-fiction of the Irish playwright is analysed. The author shows that Yeats's attitude towards the Russian writer, though initially favourable, was gradually becoming more and more irreverent and complex. Similar attitudes towards Tolstoy are detected in Russian writers of the period. Yeats criticises Tolstoy for his didactic tendencies. Nevertheless, Yeats acknowledges Tolstoy's genius and puts him on a par with greatest ancient and modern authors (Shakespeare, Goethe, English romantic poets, Balzac, Flaubert, Ibsen, etc.). Yeats's absolute favourite is his idea of non-resistance and non-violence, which is interpreted in Yeats's own way in his play Where There is Nothing. Yeats's reading of this concept is set in the context of the early 20th century discussion around Tolstoyism, since at the time Tolstoy was mostly perceived as a thinker in Britain. Yeats's position in this discussion is thoroughly analysed. It is most probable that Yeats read one of very short pamphlets compiled by English editors of Tolstoy. The author argues that Tolstoy's ideas and images in Yeats's play were immediately grasped and attacked by its critics. A comparative analysis of the play and Tolstoy's manifesto “What I Believe” reveals that in the play the Russian author's teaching interacts with Nietzschean philosophy and Yeats's own symbolism, as well as various occult practices he was deeply interested in. This amalgam is concentrated in the paradoxical image of a prophet, visionary, destroyer of the old world order (in fact, any order - secular and ecclesiastical) and at the same time a preacher of non-violence, Paul Ruttledge. As it has been argued in previous studies, the episode of a mock trial echoes Tolstoy's interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. The in-depth analysis shows that not only this episode is related to Tolstoy but the whole play is somewhat reminiscent of his vision of Christian life (rejection of people's law as opposed to God's law, and of urban living; criticism of civilization; necessity for manual labour and simple life in harmony with nature; call for unity and equality of all people). Despite these similarities, there is still a lot of disagreement with Tolstoy in the play, mainly due to the Nietzschean influence (desire to destroy the old world, Dionysian motifs), who Yeats considered to be the exact opposite of Tolstoy. A similar juxtaposition of Tolstoy and Nietzsche is found in both English and Russian literature. A parallel is revealed between Paul and Tolstoy, who, according to Yeats, were mad prophets unable to change the world. This parallel is both mocking and tragic, and Paul is in line with other Yeats's images of jesters and madmen.

After the Peace: Performing Placelessness in David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue

This paper examines how contemporary Northern Irish playwright David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue (2016) articulates the Northern Irish unionists’ antagonism in tandem with the displacement of Ulster in a world of changing spaces. While post-Troubles Northern Irish dramas have been easily grouped together with a shared sensibility in their attitude towards the processes of truth and reconciliation, Ireland’s drama regards the process of spatial homogenization as a crisis, a sense of placelessness, or the loss of the socio-culturally distinct Northern Irish identity. Cyprus Avenue traces the unionists’ sense of placelessness, fear, and anger for the identity dissolution, as globalization requires the psychological and emotional attachment to Northern Irish place to be erased. The play further shows the burdens of geo-ideologically liminal positioning of Ulster unionism and unionists’ psychogeography by highlighting bizarre and violent ways in which unionism is maintained and reproduced in the post-peace process Brexit era. The dramatic power of Ireland draws on the tension between the placelessness in a world of changing spaces and the quest for the assertion of the primacy of place. Ireland’s drama helps to acknowledge new predicaments and contestations of disintegrating Ulster unionism in shaping the milieu of post-peace process Northern Ireland. Rather than defining or constructing a unique identity, Cyprus Avenue allows us to examine contrasting dramatic focuses for contemporary Northern Irish geography as the play adheres to, yet challenges the Northern Irish identity problems. On a broader scope, this paper aims to demonstrate that Ireland’s drama can significantly contribute to understanding different dimensions of the Northern Irish milieu.

«THE MAKROPULOS AFFAIR» AND THE THINKING ABOUT LONGEVITY AND THE SENSE OF LIFE

The paper deals with the play, written by the Czech writer Karel Čapek «The Makropulos Affair». The play is analyzed in the context of philosophical search of the time of its emergence. Particularly, I. I. Mechnikov’s essays concerning longevity and accompanying it the sense of life matters are observed in the paper. Also, the author makes the comparative analysis of the ideas, represented by the K. Čapek’s play and by the Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw’s theatrical work «Back to Methuselah», in which the ideas of longevity and the sense of life were raised. These works were published almost simultaneously, and both authors were influenced by Mechnikovs’ views. The points of contact and differences in authors’ positions are observed. The paper represents modi of actualization of longevity and the sense of life issues in the contemporary culture by the examples of the musical «The Recipe of her Youth» and the case study from the Julian Baggini’s popular philosophy guide «The Pig that Want to Be Eaten». We can agree with the Baggini’s idea that the sense of life is not defined by the numbers of years, but by their fullness with contents and the desire to use them in full.

Kindred Spirits

Lajos Gulácsy (1882-1932), the acknowledged Hungarian painter of the early twentieth century, was a kindred spirit to Irish playwright and poet Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), sharing his love of beauty, his escapism, and his belief in the superiority of art over mundane reality. Gulácsy’s art cannot be easily described in relation to the artistic groups and tendencies of his age; however, the literary portion of his oeuvre reveals definite affinities and parallels with dominant artistic trends of the millennium. Gulácsy wrote a number of essays, short-stories and tales, and even a novel, Pauline Holseel (1910), which all give evidence to an aesthetic similar to that of Oscar Wilde. Pauline Holseel, in particular, shows close correspondences with Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Besides displaying the typical features of the Künstlerroman of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, such as the lack of a plot, artists as protagonists, or a heavy reliance on sensual experiences, they also share more particular parallels concerning structure and attitude to art. (ÉP)

Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740–1820. Ed. David O’Shaughnessy.

<i>Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740–1820</i>. Ed. David O’Shaughnessy.

Deirdre Kinahan’sUnmanageable Sisters: Michel Tremblay’sBelles-sœurson the Irish Stage

In spring 2018, Deirdre Kinahan’s The Unmanageable Sisters, an adaptation of Michel Tremblay’s landmark Les belles-sœurs (1968), was performed in the Abbey Theatre. A “smash hit” (Abbey programme) with the Irish audience, it was restaged in summer 2019. The Dublin version by a young and accomplished Irish playwright stages the comparability of the language register and of the socioeconomic and cultural circumstances that inspired the original thus underlining the connection between the two theater communities. It also demonstrates theater’s role in voicing the language, lives, and daily traumas of impoverished, undereducated, and marginalized women. This study contends that Tremblay’s and Kinahan’s success is attributable to the dramaturges’ understanding, interpretation, and staging of the intersectionality of the issues addressed. Intersectionality focuses on the layering and interaction of multiple sources of power, oppression, and marginalization. Previous English translations did not capture the intersectionality central to the original.

Staging Trauma: Bodies in Shadow

Staging Trauma: Bodies in Shadow

On Carr’s Eleven-Dimensional Dramaturgy

Contemporary Irish playwright Marina Carr integrates eleven-dimension theory into her post dramatic art creation, forming a unique eleven-dimensional dramaturgy. This unique eleven-dimensional dramaturgy runs through Carr's whole drama creation career, and has different focuses in different periods: in her early drama, Carr concentrated on the expression of the concept of “non-linear time”. In the mid-land drama, she focuses on the creation of “high dimensional space”, while in the later drama of death and fantasy, she focuses on the presentation of “multidimensional worlds”. Finally, with the connection of the eleven-dimensional dramaturgy, Carr created a “non-linear”, “high dimensional” and “multi-dimensional” dynamic post-dramatic theater, and conveyed the eleven-dimensional philosophy of life beyond time and space.

Register in Samuel Beckett’s Writings in English and French:

Abstract Samuel Beckett, the Irish author and playwright was born in 1906 in County Dublin, Ireland and died in 1989, in Paris, France. From 1929 to 1989, Beckett wrote letters through which his life is depicted. His letters were published in the form of four volumes entitled as follows: volume I: 1929-1940 (published in 2009), volume II: 1941-1956 (published in 2011), volume III: 1957-1965 (published in 2014), and lastly, volume IV: 1966-1989 (published in 2016). These letters were later translated in French by the publishing house of Gallimard between 2014 and 2018. Within a morpho-semantic framework of analysis, one may wonder to what extent there exists stylistic affinities between his letters and his famous tragicomedy entitled Waiting for Godot (published in 1952). In other terms, are there constant, and/or shared stylistic units? To what extent has the register been changed from his letters to his play? How may the vocabulary, punctuation, and grammar differ from the English version of Waiting for Godot to the French version? Do these stylistic changes from English to French affect the notions of 20th-century man in the society in France? By drawing on certain theories of theoreticians in linguistics and translation studies such as Brian T. Fitch, Anthony Uhlmann, and Saeid Rahipour, this research seeks to present a linguistic and translation analysis of Beckett’s register in his four volumes of letters and English, and French versions of his play Waiting for Godot. Hence, this study aims to investigate the extent to which the Irish writer’s register has been differentiated in the corpus under study by the passage of time to suit the stylistic norms of 20th century in France and England.

‘Aveugle comme le destin’: Blindness and its Inevitability in Samuel Beckett’s Theatre

Abstract Blindness proliferates throughout the œuvre of francophone Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. It is one of many forms of disability to appear in Beckett’s theatre, but is notable for the simultaneous uncertainty and certainty which surround it. While the audience can rarely be sure whether the characters they observe can see or not, and indeed must enter into a generalized structure of doubt as regards sight, the characters seem to understand blindness as an inevitability. This article examines three characters explicitly identified as blind — Pozzo in En attendant Godot, A in Fragment de théâtre i, and Hamm in Fin de partie — in direct relation to their blindness, using disability theory to examine the status of sightlessness within these texts, as opposed to viewing it as metaphor or allegory. It furthermore considers responses to blindness, from both the blind characters and their sighted companions as well as from the audience, whose potential responses to this particular disability are considered in the light of Ato Quayson’s concept of ‘aesthetic nervousness’.

IRELAND/IRISHNESS IN TRANSITION: CONOR MCPHERSON'S “THE WEIR”

As a contemporary Irish playwright who is well-known for his monologue plays, Conor McPherson (1971- ) illustrates the changing process of Irishness within the scope of clashing traditional and modern values in The Weir. In the early twentieth century as a result of the nationalist and isolationist policy, Irish identity was constructed as rural, agricultural, and Catholic, but it began to change with the impact of the Celtic Tiger referring to an economic boom starting in the mid-1990s. In this article, The Weir is analysed as a transition play representing the 1990s in terms of the collision of the old and the new Irishness with regard to social, sexual, and religious values. This paper aims to examine and discuss Ireland and Irishness in transition within the context of rural-urban, traditional-modern, local-global dichotomies escalating by the impact of the Celtic Tiger period.

An Outsider’s Eye: The Art of Designing for Theatre

Part memoir, part theatre history, in this illustrated essay Joe Vaněk invites us to an inside-view on the design process. Choosing key performances of European plays (Brecht, Ibsen) adapted by Irish writers, Vaněk takes us through the thought processes and work practices that bring a play from page to stage, with descriptions and photographs to illustrate his design choices and thinking. Additionally, he offers us insights into working with Irish playwrights who examine Ireland’s relationship to Europe, for example in his designs for Frank McGuinness’s Innocence: The life of Caravaggio, and the work of Brian Friel and Hugo Hamilton. Vaněk traces his own influences, from the theatre work of the Czech designer Josef Svoboda to painters, architecture, and landscape. His reflections reveal the complexity of the role of the designer and the intricate workings of theatre practice Keywords: Theatre design, costume design, Irish playwrights, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Hugo Hamilton, Gate Theatre

Eamonn Jordan. The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities. London: Methuen Drama, 2019, xi + 235 pp., £75.00 (hardback), £28.99 (paperback), £64.80 (PDF ebook). Patrick Lonergan. Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950. London: Methuen Drama, 2019, ix + 263 pp., £65.00 (hardback), £17.99 (paperback), £17.27 (PDF ebook).

Article Eamonn Jordan. The Theatre and Films of Conor McPherson: Conspicuous Communities. London: Methuen Drama, 2019, xi + 235 pp., £75.00 (hardback), £28.99 (paperback), £64.80 (PDF ebook). Patrick Lonergan. Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950. London: Methuen Drama, 2019, ix + 263 pp., £65.00 (hardback), £17.99 (paperback), £17.27 (PDF ebook). was published on May 1, 2021 in the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English (volume 9, issue 1).

Adaptation and Nation: Theatrical Contexts for Contemporary English and Irish Drama

Adaptation and Nation: Theatrical Contexts for Contemporary English and Irish Drama

When Narrative Becomes Theatrical

ABSTRACT Storytelling is an integral component of Irish tradition, folklore, and culture. Ireland's rich narrative tradition can be traced back to the early oral act of storytelling, undertaken by the seanchaí (storyteller or historian). Despite the wide spectrum of studies and broadly ranging arguments on storytelling in general and other specific aspects, in Irish drama narrative and the monologue, as well as narrative levels and types of narrators, have never been analyzed. In narratological terms Irish drama is rich with various degrees of diegetic narrativity employed differently by its various playwrights. This article looks more closely into a subject that until now has not received attention in the context of Irish theatre. In Irish theatre, in which language, narrative, and storytelling are recurrent topics, it is crucial that we understand how narrative is more complicated than the simple telling of a story and that it possesses techniques and levels that are worth reflecting on for their ability to change nuance and the experience of the audience.

“Talking of the Fairy Road”: Modulations of the Seanchaí in Conor McPherson’s The Weir

Focusing on The Weir (1999), one of Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s masterpieces, this study attempts to elaborate the ways in which the Irish traditional seanchai is mirrored in this play. A seanchai is an Irish traditional storyteller, who has always been one of the most prevalent features of Irish folklore and which has recently been revived by Irish playwrights. In The Weir, McPherson incorporates the old seanchai tradition and places it within modern human contexts. Except for one, each of the characters of the play is playing the role of a seanchai, which is manipulated by McPherson not only to depict a popular Irish tradition but also to present human interior feelings of fear, trauma, and desolation. This paper testifies to the enduring importance of the role of Irish traditional seanchai, which has adapted and survived over modernization. The analysis aims not just to understand the ways in which the play uses the seanchais’ techniques but also explores the significance of the stories narrated by each of these seanchais in the play. The Irish seanchai tradition is known for its eloquence. Likewise, seanchais in The Weir expressively narrate their stories to generate gorgeous, realistic, and sometimes tragic form of drama, which reflects an artfulness that renders this play distinct amongst other plays.

Dancing and Remembering: A Contextual Reading of Brian Friel’s Play Dancing at Lughnasa

In Brian Friel’s play Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), the Irish playwright describes the last joyful moments in the lives of five unmarried Irish sisters who live together in a poor cottage in the fictional small town of Ballybeg in North Ireland. The retrospective tale that is narrated by the adult Michael, who is also the illegitimate son of Chris –one of the five sisters- portrays the forces that led to the collapse of the family in the 1936 summer during the Lughnasa festival celebrations. The hybrid form of drama and storytelling is Brian Friel’s device to escape mega narrative and focus on the stories of individuals and small families. This de-familiarization of traditional literary conventions enables him to surrender grand history to personal stories. Furthermore, Friel is experimenting with the memory play form as he believes that man’s memory anamnesis should not be trusted as factual. Furthermore, dance also plays a significant role in the play where almost every character dances at a certain point, but it is how every character involves in the act of dancing that illuminates him/her to the theatergoers. Indeed, dancing in the play is a release that connotes unfulfilled desires and hopes that cannot be expressed in words. In short, Brian Friel is the playwright who most probably defines Ireland to the outside world through analyzing the complexities of Irish culture

Brian Friel in Spain: An Off-Centre Love Story

Spanish theatres are not prolific in the staging of Irish playwrights. However, the Northern Irish writer Brian Friel (1929-2015) has been a curious exception, his plays having been performed in different cities in Spain since William Layton produced Amantes: vencedores y vencidos (Lovers: Winners and Losers) in 1972. The origin of Friel’s popularity in this country may be attributed to what many theatre directors and audiences considered to be a parallel political situation between post-colonial Ireland and the historical peripheral communities with a language other than Spanish: Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia; the fact is that the number of Catalan directors who have staged works by Friel exceeds that of any other territory in Spain. However, despite the political identification that can be behind the success of a play like Translations (1980), the staging of others with a subtler political overtone, such as Lovers (1967), Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), Molly Sweeney (1994), Faith Healer (1979) and Afterplay (2001), should prompt us to find the reason for this imbalance of representation elsewhere. By analysing the production of the plays, both through the study of their programmes and interviews with their protagonists, and by scrutinising their reception, I have attempted to discern some common factors to account for the selection of Friel’s dramatic texts.

Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950 by Patrick Lonergan

Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950 by Patrick Lonergan