Dissident Dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish Theatre

Description

From Boston to Berlin, and from Belfast to Beijing, the performances of Irish plays have been greeted with critical and box-office acclaim. Plays by Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Marie Jones, Martin McDonagh, Frank McGuinness, Tom Murphy, Mark O’Rowe, Conor McPherson and Enda Walsh have toured extensively, and have been translated and adapted for new performance contexts. This book examines the dramaturgical patterns in contemporary Irish plays, from 1980 to the present. In all of the work produced both locally and abroad, Ireland and a coerced and admired notion of ‘Irishness’ function in part as a commodity but also as something uniquely defiant, liberating and dissident in itself.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Dramaturgies

Chapter 2: Playing with History and Memory

Chapter 3: The Seduction of Innocence

Chapter 4: Always the Real Thing: Contesting the Pastoral

Chapter 5: ‘Sounds from the Underground’: Any Myth will Do?

Chapter 6: Narrative- Tell me a Story

Chapter 7: The Glut of Monologues: Look Who’s Talking, Too

Conclusion

About the Author

Eamonn Jordan is Lecturer in Drama Studies at the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin. He has written extensively on Irish Theatre including The Feast of Famine: The Plays of Frank McGuinness. Most recently, he co-edited with Lilian Chambers The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. His book Dissident Dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish Theatre was published in 2010 by Irish Academic Press.