Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation

by M. Sihra (Editor)

Overview

Featuring original essays by leading scholars in the field, this book explores the immense legacy of women playwrights in Irish theatre since the beginning of theTwentieth century. Chapters consider the intersecting contexts of gender, sexuality and the body in order to investigate the broader cultural, political and historical implications of representing 'woman' on the stage. In addition, a number of essays engage with representations of women by a selection of male playwrights in order to re-evaluate familiar contexts and traditions in Irish drama. Features a Foreword by Marina Carr and a useful appendix of Irish women playwrights and their works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230006478
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	03/14/2007
Series:	Performance Interventions
Edition description:	2007
Pages:	241
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.02(d)

About the Author

MARINA CARR Playwright JANELLE REINELT Professor of Performance Studies, Warwick University, UK PAUL MURPHY Lecturer in Drama Studies, Queen's University Belfast, UK VELMA O'DONOGHUE GREENE Doctoral candidate, School of Drama, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland CATHY LEENEY Lecturer in Drama, University College Dublin, Ireland LISA FITZPATRICK Lecturer in Drama, University of Ulster at Magee, UK ANNA MCMULLAN Chair of Drama, Queen's University Belfast, UK MARK PHELAN Lecturer in Drama Studies, Queen's University Belfast, UK EAMONN JORDAN Lecturer in Performing Arts, Institute of Technology, Sligo, Ireland RACHEL O'RIORDAN Lecturer in Drama Studies, Queen's University Belfast, UK ENRICA CERQUONI Teaching Fellow, Drama Studies Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland ANTHONY ROCHE Associate Professor, School of English and Drama, University College Dublin, Ireland BRIAN SINGLETON Head of the School of Drama, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland OLWEN FOUÉRÉ Actor associated with the company Operating Theatre

Table of Contents

Foreword; M.Carr Preface; J.Reinelt Introduction: Figures at the Window; M.Sihra Interchapter I; C.Leeney Woman as Fantasy Object in Lady Gregory's Historical Tragedies; P.Murphy Writing Women for a Modern Ireland: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne Day; V.O'Donoghue Greene The Spaces Outside: Images of Women in Plays by Eva Gore-Booth and Dorothy Macardle; C.Leeney Taking Their Own Road: The Female Protagonist in Three Irish Plays by Women': L.Fitzpatrick Interchapter II; M.Sihra From Matron to Matrix: Gender and (Dis)embodiment in Beckett's Theatre; A.McMullan Beyond the Pale: Neglected Northern Irish Women Playwrights, Alice Milligan, Helen Wadell and Patricia O'Connor; M.Phelan Meta-physicality: Women Characters in the Plays of Frank McGuinness; E.Jordan Dead Women Walking: The Female Body as a Site for War in Stewart Parker's Northern Star ; R.O'Riordan Interchapter III; M.Sihra Women in Rooms: Landscapes of the Missing in Anne Devlin's Ourselves Alone ; E.Cerquoni Liminal Spaces in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Dún na mBan Trí Thine ( The Fort of the Fairy Women is on Fire ); A.Roche Sick, Dying, Dead, Dispersed: The Evanescence of Patriarchy in Contemporary Irish Women's Theatre; B.Singleton Marina Carr's Landscapes of Play and Possibility; M.Sihra Afterword: The Act and the Word; O.Fouéré Appendix: List of Irish Women Playwrights and their Key Works Index

Editorial Reviews

'What makes this book a stimulating and enlightening read is how thoroughly many of the individual authors combine the goals of both uncovering and interrogating plays by and images of women, and placing these in their cultural contexts for the purposes of the book's sustained critique of patriarchal structures... [an] important volume.'

- Karen Fricker, Contemporary Theatre Review

'... the book addresses a longstanding critical blind spot, includes a helpful appendix of Irish women playwrights dating from 1663, and points the way forward to a number of fruitful areas for future research.'

- Theatre Research International

'This volume undoubtedly fulfils its declared intent of widening the debate concerning the representation of women on the Irish stage... Its most striking achievement is the exposure of little-known work by female playwrights and the appended directory is an inspired move which provides an invaluable resource.'

- Margaret Maxwell, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies

From the Publisher