Abbey Theatre

Spreading The News is a drama play written by the Irish woman playwright Lady Augusta Gregory. The play is specifically written for a performance of the opening night of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904. It was performed along with William Butler Yeats’s iconic plays On Baile’s Strand and Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Spreading The News was very successful, and it was still acted on theatres until mid 20th century. The play’s setting in a small West Country village in Ireland. The main character Bartley Fallon is a gloomy individual and he always talks about his ill fate to everyone. Bartley is caught up in the middle of a town scandal, a number of misunderstandings make the villagers believe that Bartley has murdered Jack Smith, in a rage about Jack’s wife. At the end of the play, they are arrested together by the English magistrate to be sent to the prison. In this essay, the idea that Lady Gregory’s transformed views about the Irish-English dispute is represented by the portrayal of the magistrate and other characters tried to be exemplified with socio-political background. Moreover, the contribution of Lady Gregory to the Irish and world theatre as a woman writer, actor and manager is also considered in the paper.

Responding to Guy Julier's call for a "knowing practice" of design studies, this doctoral thesis reveals Ireland's negotiation with modernity through stage design. I use historian T.J. Clark's definition of modernity as "contingency," which "turn [s] from the worship of ancestors and past authorities to the pursuit of a projected future". Over the course of 60 years that saw the transformation of a pre-industrialised colony to a modernised republic, stage designs offered various possibilities of imagining Irish life. In the same period, the Abbey Theatre's company shuttled itself from small community halls to the early 19th-century Mechanics' Theatre, before moving to the commercial Queen's Theatre, and finally arriving at the modern building that currently houses it. This thesis shines new light on that journey. By investigating the design references outside theatre, we can see how Abbey Theatre productions underlined new ways of envisioning life in Ireland. Revivalist design, through incorporation of Arts and Crafts design and realism, roused social issues in the last years of colonial occupation. Expressionist design put shape on the fragmented landscape after the Civil War. Resistance to the cultural isolationism of de Valera's policies was located in striking cosmopolitan design in the 1930s and 1940s. Frustration with the status quo in the post-World War II period was articulated through costuming inspired by counter-culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, significant designers and playwrights in Irish theatre will be uncovered by scholarship for the first time here. These include Tanya Moiseiwitsch, Alicia

William Butler Yeats was one of the most innovative playwrights of the last century. With a visionary approach, Yeats propounded a theatrical reform aimed at creating an unconventional national theatre for Ireland that would be used as both a powerful socio-political tool and as a sacred place of spiritual elevation. Whilst being inspired by western innovative influences, the decisive turning point came when Yeats discovered Japanese nō theatre, which he identified as the most authentic and secular application of his reform. A nō drama, comparable to a Yeatsian dance play, consists of the staging of dramatic rituals with folkloric contents in which actors wear masks and culminates in a dance.
In the light of these premises, this paper aims to examine the transcultural value of Yeats’s dramaturgy after his interaction with nō theatre, through the analysis Four Plays for Dancers which focuses on concepts such as ritual, mask and dance. Initially, Yeats’s life and his experience at the Abbey Theatre are outlined in order to illustrate the Western influences on his theatrical reform and to emphasise Yeats’s natural inclination to embrace the conventions of nō theatre. Next, the Four Plays for Dancers’ dance plays are examined through the key elements of ritual, mask, and dance, which link Yeats’s theatre to nō theatre.
Finally, the transcultural value of Yeats’s work is highlighted by illustrating later adaptations of his first nō-inspired dance play: At the Hawk’s Well. This review provides a starting point for future investigations and insights into the categorisation of masks and dances. This may support the argument of the work’s transculturality and provide a basis for future nō adaptations of Yeats’s other dance plays such as The Only Jealousy of Emer and Calvary, for which there is as yet no Japanese version.

Focusing on the transition of contemporary poetry from writing to orality and from the correlated conversion of the modern poet into an oral performer, this essay aims to analyze the works of the Italian scholar, poet, musician, and performer Francesco Benozzo. An attempt will be done to offer a provisional assessment of Benozzo's poetry, which form a large unit of extraordinary stylistic and thematic strength, a "poetic novel" combining pure "landscape literature," metapoetic reflection and meditation on existence.

This thesis considers theories about the relationship between theatre makers and audience members in theatre-how this relationship is established and how it can break down. The thesis posits that the breakdown of a theatre relationship is manifested in audience behaviour which, when it is severe enough, can lead to interventions in performance and, potentially, the breakdown of that performance. The thesis argues that audience intervention in a performance constitutes a seizure of 'performance power' from the theatre makers, which is sufficiently difficult to achieve that successful and sustained interventions can only be carried out by groups of audience members and, probably, organized in advance. Further, the thesis suggests that in its most extreme form, such interventions may bring about a transfer of roles and power between audience members and theatre makers such that a new quasi-theatrical 'performance of protest' is created. The thesis surveys three historical cases in which theatre performances were disrupted by deliberate audience interventions. In each case the nature of the intervention was slightly different and the effect upon the performance was also different. In the first example, the Plough and the Stars riots (Dublin, 1926) a preplanned protest occurred in the playhouse and, despite interruption, the performance continued. In the second instance, the audience at Living Theatre's Paradise Now (California 1969) erupted in spontaneous protest within the theatre and the performance was almost entirely subsumed. In the final study, the Mervyn Thompson case (Auckland 1984) the protest took two forms: first there was a vigilante-style attack on Thompson himself which took place well away from any theatre event but had strong theatrical references; then several of his performances were affected by organized lobbying, pickets and interruptions. The thesis asks why the rupture in the theatre relationship occurred in each case and considers what these instances have to tell us about the breakdown of theatre performance as a social phenomenon. The thesis finds that in all three cases the audience members carrying out the interventions belonged to pre-existing groups with prior experience in protest action. The thesis also finds that the protesters had all had direct experience of some other 'dramatic' or 'theatrical' event in their own lives; experiences that made the performance seem less relevant. Given this, the thesis argues that, in these cases, the propensity to disrupt was brought to the theatre relationship by the audience members rather than being a direct response to the performance, even where that performance was confrontational. These findings have implications for theatre study and practice: in particular, the thesis raises questions about how we look at performance breakdown. Rather than assuming audience protest is a simple response to the performance, the findings suggest that such events must be considered in the light of the wider social and political context of the performance, most particularly the audience members' preoccupations. Finally, the thesis asks whether audience protest, however theatrical it appears, can ever become substitute theatre in the true sense of that word. Special thanks are due to my chief supervisor Dr. Jan Pilditch, for all the encouragement, expert guidance and unfailing support I have received over the last few years. Thanks also to: Jeremy Bell, for support and friendship throughout; Dr. Will Peterson who lent me early encouragement and an invaluable wad of notes on Sean O'Casey; Dr. William Farrimond for challenging and pertinent feedback on draft chapters; Gaye Poole for astute comments and assistance with the Introduction; John Davies for insights on New Zealand theatre; Athenaide Dallett for inspiration and personal encouragement, Julia, Kirstine, the Fionas, the Catherines and other 'fellow-sufferers' for being great role models, great company and great cake bakers; Seth in California for illuminating the Berkeley of the 1960s; library staff and dept secretaries (particularly Joanne and Jean) for chasing up references, photocopying, organizing rooms and other invaluable acts of practical assistance; my colleagues in the Arts team at the School of Education for supporting me in the closing stages of my studies.

Lucia Joyce, born to Irish exiles James Joyce and Nora Barnacle in Trieste, 1907, 1 has captured the imagination of many writers and artists as a tragic muse. Filmmakers, dramatists, and novelists have projected everything from Mills-and Boon-style narratives, where the real protagonists are celebrated male writers (Samuel Beckett, one of Lucia's many boyfriends, and her father) for whom she is just a bridge, to unfounded stories of incest and child-abuse, to comic-strip extravaganzas. How did Lucia get to be such a supine, empty space? Apart from Carol Loeb Shloss's groundbreaking and controversial 2003 biography, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, you don't hear much about Lucia the dancer, who once declared in exasperation "c'est moi qui est l'artiste." The time is nigh to focus on Lucia as artist in her own right, of whom the 1928 Paris Times wrote: "When she reaches her full capacity for rhythmic dancing, James Joyce may yet be known as his daughter's father." f i l e d u n d e r "miscellaneous" Aptly, James Joyce described his daughter as "an innovator, not yet understood." 2 Triestine Italian may have been her mother tongue, but as the composer George Antheil noticed, "Italian apparently was a sort of secret society between Joyce and his two children to which Mrs. Joyce had not been admitted-and which she did not mind." 3 In 1920s Paris, this chasm grew wider as Lucia was known to "skip from English into French, and from French into Italian in the course of going from one side of the room to the other," 4 but as a pioneering modern dancer at the heart of avant-garde Paris, she also "spoke" an innovative physical language that transcended the deirdre mulrooney to found the Royal Ballet of Great Britain). 7 "Tom has written praising above all other dancers public dancers, James Joyce's daughter," he wrote to his wife George, who was at home looking after his new Abbey School of Ballet in his absence. "We may use her someday." The unfulfilled possibilities hinted at here are exciting indeed, both for Lucia, and for the ultimate development of dance as an art form in Ireland. Realigning Lucia Joyce with Yeats's and De Valois's short-lived Abbey School of Ballet (1927-33) reveals that the narrative arc of her training and career should be incorporated into the map of twentieth-century Irish dance history. 8 Shining factual light on her talent and unrealized potential illuminates Lucia as part of a suppressed cultural history of the body that is populated with, and indeed fueled by, many culturally significant so-called artistic "failures," like her own. The "Tom" mentioned by W. B. Yeats in his 1928 letter is Thomas Mac-Greevy, the under-the-radar, early twentieth-century experimental poet, cultural connector, and future director of the National Gallery of Ireland. 9 An unlikely ballet aficionado from Tarbert, County Kerry, who got his ticket to the wider world when he passed his British civil service exams in 1910, MacGreevy is key to the reclamation of this lost cultural narrative. He stepped onto the stage of the Dublin Arts scene in 1919 when he started reading for his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, on scholarship for ex-officers of World War I. This was when he joined Dublin Arts Club and Dublin Drama League, befriending fellow member George Yeats, and soon becoming a trusted interlocutor in the conversation around Yeats's November 1927 foundation of the Abbey School of Ballet, among many other matters. Possibly most unsung of all is the mild-mannered MacGreevy's incarnation as avant-garde dance influencer in the 1920s. Yeats published his Four Plays for Dancers, with Macmillan, London, in 1921 (see Figure 2), in a handsome volume, designed by Edmund Dulac, comprising The Only Jealousy of Emer, Calvary, The Dreaming of the Bones with original score by Walter Morse Rummel, and At the Hawk's Well, with original score by Edmund Dulac. 10 Yeats had begun these highly ritualistic Noh-style plays, inspired by poet Ezra Pound who was editing Ernest Fenellosa's essay "Classic Noh Theatre of Japan," while living with Pound at Stone Cottage, Sussex, from 1913 to 1916. 11 At the Hawk's Well, starring Japanese dancer Michio Ito as the eponymous hawk/guardian of the well, was the only play from this 1921 collection to get what Yeats considered a proper production before the advent of the Abbey School of Ballet. 12 The audience in Lady Cunard's London drawing room for the April 1916

Theatre of the street A man should find his Holy Land where he first crept upon the floor ... familiar woods and rivers should fade into symbol with so gradual a change that he may never discover, no, not even in ecstasy itself, that he is beyond space ...' 1 145

is considered one of the greatest play writers in the Irish Dramatic Movement. His importance refers back to his realistic portrayal of the Irish society in general and of Dublin in particular. It is his experience in the slums of Dublin that provides him with the details that he employed in his plays. The study aims at proving that by describing Dublin slums, O'Casey indirectly directs a criticism of the social and political reality as a background of the bloody events that Ireland witnessed. The plays that are going to be studied are The shadow of a gunman, Juno and the Paycock, Red Roses for me. Unlike other Irish dramatists who idealized Ireland, O'Casey reveals the contradictions in the Irish society. Thus, the study concludes that O'Casey is distinguished from other Irish writers in avoiding the idealized portrayal of Ireland and offers us a mock-heroic treatment of his society

This research focuses on Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, which depicts the bitter and tragic reality of an American Midwestern family. Along with the unpleasant female situation, it also declares for the growing consciousness in women in the decades after the mid-twentieth century. This research explores the psychological and physical exploitation of women by challenging male superiority. To accomplish the goal of the research, the feminist perspective of analysis plays a significant role. Feminist literary theory problematizes the whole human history as male history. The works and ideas of the feminist critics and theorists like Virginia Woolf, Simon de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Mary Ellman, Elaine Showalter, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others are included in the theoretical modality. Whatever the different feminists argue, in common, they are concerned with the issues of gender, equality, and freedom of women. Feminism tries to dismantle the long-established patriarchal system that subo...

This research focuses on Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, which depicts the bitter and tragic reality of an American Midwestern family. Along with the unpleasant female situation, it also declares for the growing consciousness in women in the decades after the mid-twentieth century. This research explores the psychological and physical exploitation of women by challenging male superiority. To accomplish the goal of the research, the feminist perspective of analysis plays a significant role. Feminist literary theory problematizes the whole human history as male history. The works and ideas of the feminist critics and theorists like Virginia Woolf, Simon de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Mary Ellman, Elaine Showalter, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others are included in the theoretical modality. Whatever the different feminists argue, in common, they are concerned with the issues of gender, equality, and freedom of women. Feminism tries to dismantle the long-established patriarchal system that subo...

His importance refers back to his realistic portrayal of the Irish society in general and of Dublin in particular. It is his experience in the slums of Dublin that provides him with the details that he employed in his plays. The study aims at proving that by describing Dublin slums, O'Casey indirectly directs a criticism of the social and political reality as a background of the bloody events that Ireland witnessed. The plays that are going to be studied are The shadow of a gunman, Juno and the Paycock, Red Roses for me. Unlike other Irish dramatists who idealized Ireland, O'Casey reveals the contradictions in the Irish society. Thus, the study concludes that O'Casey is distinguished from other Irish writers in avoiding the idealized portrayal of Ireland and offers us a mock-heroic treatment of his society

This study aims at shedding light on Yeats as a philosopher, especially his views of life and the possibility of the coming back of the soul after death. The study aims at investigating Yeats' philosophical attitudes as presented in Purgatory. Though the title denotes Christian implications, the study aims to prove that it is far away from Christianity. Rather, as the study argues, it is a summary of Yeats' philosophic beliefs; especially his views of life and death. In Purgatory, Yeats interlinked between philosophy and literature magnificently. He employed modernist theatrical techniques by using light and sound techniques supported by symbols and imagery to express his themes. Yeats focused on the concept of purgation as presented in Purgatory The study concludes that Yeats' Purgatory is a prediction of a degeneration in humanity in general, and of Irish society, unless people "purify" their race by choosing to be away from any form of corruption. In the play, the father killed his son because he is afraid that he would repeat the same crime that his father had done many years ago. This crime is discussed metaphorically it stands for many political meanings, Yeats warned people that if purgation is not performed wisely, it will lead to a failure of civilization and the rise of a state of anarchy. Therefore, Yeats' Purgatory, as the study proved, is a metaphoric portrayal of the political, cultural and historical milieu of Ireland presented in a philosophical context.

This study aims at shedding light on Yeats as a philosopher, especially his views of life and the possibility of the coming back of the soul after death. The study aims at investigating Yeats' philosophical attitudes as presented in Purgatory. Though the title denotes Christian implications, the study aims to prove that it is far away from Christianity. Rather, as the study argues, it is a summary of Yeats' philosophic beliefs; especially his views of life and death. In Purgatory, Yeats interlinked between philosophy and literature magnificently. He employed modernist theatrical techniques by using light and sound techniques supported by symbols and imagery to express his themes. Yeats focused on the concept of purgation as presented in Purgatory The study concludes that Yeats' Purgatory is a prediction of a degeneration in humanity in general, and of Irish society, unless people "purify" their race by choosing to be away from any form of corruption. In the play, the father killed his son because he is afraid that he would repeat the same crime that his father had done many years ago. This crime is discussed metaphorically it stands for many political meanings, Yeats warned people that if purgation is not performed wisely, it will lead to a failure of civilization and the rise of a state of anarchy. Therefore, Yeats' Purgatory, as the study proved, is a metaphoric portrayal of the political, cultural and historical milieu of Ireland presented in a philosophical context.

His importance refers back to his realistic portrayal of the Irish society in general and of Dublin in particular. It is his experience in the slums of Dublin that provides him with the details that he employed in his plays. The study aims at proving that by describing Dublin slums, O'Casey indirectly directs a criticism of the social and political reality as a background of the bloody events that Ireland witnessed. The plays that are going to be studied are The shadow of a gunman, Juno and the Paycock, Red Roses for me. Unlike other Irish dramatists who idealized Ireland, O'Casey reveals the contradictions in the Irish society. Thus, the study concludes that O'Casey is distinguished from other Irish writers in avoiding the idealized portrayal of Ireland and offers us a mock-heroic treatment of his society

Whatever I myself have written that is, as our people would say, 'worth while' has come from my own surroundings, my own parish, my own home." Lady Gregory, Seventy Years 316 1. M. J. MacManus, in his 1952 work Adventures of an Irish Bookman (129), and Sir Charles Petrie, in Scenes from Edwardian Life (169-70), published 1975, both claim Lady Gregory's meeting Yeats as the starting point of Coole's transformation into a center of literary nationalism, a position subsequent writing has upheld and established as something of a critical axiom. 2. As O'Connor recalls: "In Gort we went to see Lady Gregory's house for old time's sake, and it was well we did, for a few months after the Land Commission of the Irish Government sold it to a Galway builder for 500 pounds as scrap. I was always terrified out of my wits by the old lady, but somehow I feel she deserved rather better than that of the country to which she had given a theatre" (142). 205

The collaboration of William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory in the writing of their 1902 play Kathleen Ni Houlihan has been painstakingly outlined and examined by numerous scholars of early Irish Drama. Thanks to this scholarly work, sole authorship of the play is no longer credited solely to Yeats, and Kathleen Ni Houlihan must henceforth be considered a Yeats-Gregory collaboration. But as recently as 2010, The Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s National Theatre, continued to market Kathleen Ni Houlihan as a play written solely by Yeats. The two prior productions at the Abbey, one in 1990 and the other in 1984, also made no mention of Lady Augusta Gregory’s contributions to the script in their programs or marketing materials. Both productions presented Kathleen Ni Houlihan as part of an evening of Yeats plays and both imposed a style on the early drama that was more appropriate for the later experimental plays of Yeats. Critics of these interpretations of Kathleen, as seen in press cu...

This article examines the portrayal of the domestic realm in both Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's 1920s Dublin Trilogy and Korean playwright Yu Ch'i-jin's 1930s Nongchon trilogy. I argue that Yu echoes O'Casey's staging of nationhood by focusing on the homeland and the home, as he deems O'Casey's methods to be most successful for catering to the general people of the colonized nation. Moreover, I recognize that this is Yu's attempt to establish a transcolonial solidarity between Korean and Irish national theatre, rather than to produce a "Westernized" theatre tradition for the Korean nation.

Replacing the Priest: Tradition, Politics, and Religion in Early Modern Irish Drama by Leslie Valley By the beginning of the twentieth century, Ireland's identity was continually pulled between its loyalties to Catholicism and British imperialism. In response to this conflict of identity, W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory argued the need for an Irish theatre that was demonstrative of the Irish people, returning to the literary traditions to the Celtic heritage. What resulted was a questioning of religion and politics in Ireland, specifically the Catholic Church and its priests. Yeats's own drama removed the priests from the stage and replaced them with characters demonstrative of those literary traditions, establishing what he called a "new priesthood." In response to this removal, Yeats's contemporaries such as J. M. Synge and Bernard Shaw evolved his vision, creating a criticism and, ultimately, a rejection of Irish priests. In doing so, these playwrights created depictions of absent, ineffectual, and pagan priests that have endured throughout the twentieth century.

William Butler Yeats, Irish poet, dramatist and essayist, winner of the Nobel prize in 1923, was also widely known for the active  part he played in Irish politics. Even though he was mostly involved culturally - he wro.te about Irish politics in his works, established several literary clubs, founded theatres - he also activated  himself  as a politician when he was a senator during the years 1923-1928. This article focuses on the mention of his political activities in different English and Slovene texts. It makes a presentation of the vast majority of the texts on Yeats that have appeared in Slovene. It also points out that while the majority of English encyclopaedias and literary histories openly write about Yeats's politics, Slovene texts about Yeats focus mostly on his literary opus and less on his involvement in politics. When they do mention it, however, they usually avoid the details. This article tries to determine some reasons for this fact.

This study aims at shedding light on Yeats as a philosopher, especially his views of life and the possibility of the coming back of the soul after death. The study aims at investigating Yeats' philosophical attitudes as presented in Purgatory. Though the title denotes Christian implications, the study aims to prove that it is far away from Christianity. Rather, as the study argues, it is a summary of Yeats' philosophic beliefs; especially his views of life and death. In Purgatory, Yeats interlinked between philosophy and literature magnificently. He employed modernist theatrical techniques by using light and sound techniques supported by symbols and imagery to express his themes. Yeats focused on the concept of purgation as presented in Purgatory The study concludes that Yeats' Purgatory is a prediction of a degeneration in humanity in general, and of Irish society, unless people "purify" their race by choosing to be away from any form of corruption. In the play, the father killed his son because he is afraid that he would repeat the same crime that his father had done many years ago. This crime is discussed metaphorically it stands for many political meanings, Yeats warned people that if purgation is not performed wisely, it will lead to a failure of civilization and the rise of a state of anarchy. Therefore, Yeats' Purgatory, as the study proved, is a metaphoric portrayal of the political, cultural and historical milieu of Ireland presented in a philosophical context.

Sean O'Casey is considered one of the greatest play writers in the Irish Dramatic Movement. His importance refers back to his realistic portrayal of the Irish society in general and of Dublin in particular. It is his experience in the slums of Dublin that provides him with the details that he employed in his plays. The study aims at proving that by describing Dublin slums, O'Casey indirectly directs a criticism of the social and political reality as a background of the bloody events that Ireland witnessed. The plays that are going to be studied are The shadow of a gunman, Juno and the Paycock, Red Roses for me. Unlike other Irish dramatists who idealized Ireland, O'Casey reveals the contradictions in the Irish society. Thus, the study concludes that O'Casey is distinguished from other Irish writers in avoiding the idealized portrayal of Ireland and offers us a mock-heroic treatment of his society

The poetry of William Butler Yeats has been so much studied and analyzed but his dramas in verse are paid less effort. This study aims to shed light on the way Yeats thrived in writing poetic dramas in the age of prose. It is arranged to contribute to enriching the field of study because of the lack of sufficient recent researches in this area. The study starts with an introduction to poetic drama then an analytical examination of the plays of a major twentieth-century poet and dramatist, W. B. Yeats. It aims to demonstrate his contribution and influence of the revival of poetic drama in the twentieth century, a pioneer as an eminent as T. S. Eliot, with special reference to The Land of Heart’s Desire, and The Countess Cathleen, also, indication reference to some other of Yeats’ plays is important.

يُحظى شعر وليام بتلر ييتس او دبليو بي ييتس بتحليل ودراسات كثيرة لكن لم تعطى مسرحياته الاهتمام المناسب. هذه الدراسة تهدف الى تسليط الضوء على طريقة نجاح ييتس في كتابة مسرحيات شعرية في عصر النثر. الدراسة اُعدت لتسهم في اثراء مجال الدراسة كنتيجة للندرة في الابحاث الحديثة في هذا النطاق. تبدا الدراسة بمقدمة عن مفهوم المسرح الشعري، يتبع ذلك دراسة تحليلية لمسرحيات دبليو بي ييتس كأحد المسرحيين البارزين في القرن العشرين. وتهدف الى اثبات اسهاماته وتأثيراته في اعادة احياء المسرح الشعري في القرن العشرين، كأحد البارزين مثل تي اس إليوت، من خلال تطرق خاص الى مسرحيتي، "ارض أمنية القلب" و "الكونتيسة كاثلين"، اضافة الى الاشارة الموجزة عن عدد من مسرحيات ييتس كأهمية.

Lady Gregory’s play, The Rising of the Moon, is a political play written against the background
of war of independence of Ireland from the British rule. When the play was written, Ireland was
struggling for her independence against the British rule. On the issue of war of independence the
Irish people were divided into two groups. One group was in opinion that the war of
independence is not necessary because there were peace and prosperity under the British
government. On the other hand, the other group opined that slavery in any form was not good.
So, they launched a guerrilla war against the direct rule of British government and called
themselves Irish Republican Army(IRA).The play mainly deals with the two characters who are
opposite in their thoughts and actions. One, the revolutionary hero, is full of patriotism and
struggles for the freedom of his motherland. The other, an Irish police sergeant in the service of
the British government, is very loyal to perform his duty. When the two characters meet and
indulge into a discussion, they are torn into duty and patriotism. In this paper we propose to
study the power of these two opposite senses, patriotism and duty, and to find which sense
becomes triumph in the end of the play.

Gender plays an important role as it helps one understand the differences among individuals but patriarchy has created a rift between the genders by privileging one in comparison to the other. They have essentialised the roles of both men and women thus subjugating their individualities. These set of attributes associated with both men and women have undermined their potentiality for doing more. This paper is a feminist reading of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. It focuses on the three sisters--Ginny, Rose and Caroline where Ginny represents women who were subjugated by patriarchy to some extent and they considered themselves helpless and powerless. Rose represents those women who raised their voice against this subjugation by patriarchy and demanded equal rights as women and Caroline represents women who after the efforts of the feminists have achieved emancipation in comparison to Ginny who represents first wave feminists. Caroline though achieved liberty through the efforts of her sisters but she was unable to empathise with them. The universal sisterhood which feminists believe in is somehow seems missing in this novel despite the similar context of the three women.
Keywords
Feminism, Universal Sisterhood, Patriarchy, A Thousand Acres

This is the second installment of ongoing research in biographical dramas staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. I am specifically interested in documenting plays about political and/or politicized figures from Irish history. The Parnell plays discussed in this essay include Lady Gregory's The Deliverer (1911), Seumas O’Kelly’s The Parnellite (1917), Lennox Robinson's The Lost Leader (1918), William Robert Fearon’s Parnell of Avondale (1934), and Frank O’Connor and Hugh Hunt’s Moses’ Rock (1938).

Throughout his life, W.B Yeats believed that that his innate 'timid and sensitive nature' needed to be hidden from society.  Few, save those in his immediate family, knew his true character and to this day it remains well concealed and mysterious. Ellmann writes in "Yeats: The Man and the Masks" that Yeats's image was 'enveloped for the world's view in the habiliments of arrogance and power' (174). His volatile nature shall be analysed in depth in this article, with reference to Yeats's autobiography and other biographical sources. This will support an academic case study I will make involving Joseph O'Connor's contemporary Irish novel "Ghost Light". Yeats is a character in Ghost Light; however, in contrast to Joyce's Ulysses, he is an active participant in the main narrative and his unreasonable behaviour is given close scrutiny. I argue that Yeats is wearing one of his conceptual 'Masks' during the dark and unpleasant period of his life detailed in Ghost Light. From his play The Player Queen (1910) onwards, the 'Mask' would develop into a significant aesthetic concept which would permeate his prose writings (including A Vision) and late poems.  Yeats's 'Mask' is a concept similar to a 'pose' which artists assume and project. In his case, this involved living in a desolate tower in the West of Ireland, wearing a monocle (O'Connor 2010: 79), a sweeping cape and walking with a stride like Hamlet.

Yeats: prove di sistemazione e rilettura Perché tornare a Yeats? 1 Innanzitutto per tentare di sciogliere alcuni nodi più controversi e incandescenti della sua esperienza nel teatro e nella poesia. Una volta aperta la strada a un prospettiva non monodimensionale sulle pratiche del poeta irlandese, una volta sollevato il velo su quelle sottili e intricate vene di sotterranea comunicazione tra teoria del teatro, scrittura drammatica, scrittura poetica, ricerca folklorico-antropologica, pratica e sperimentazione teatrale, è un continuo affiorare di scoperte che chiedono di essere indagate.

Why did Synge vehemently predict the disappearance of a language that he loved and could speak with no small fluency? Brian O Conchubhair’s ground-breaking Fin de Siècle na Gaelige (2009) situates the Gaelic Revival within the broad contexts of contemporaneous European intellectual, social, and literary trends. I show that Synge’s understanding of evolutionary theory (and particularly of Spencer’s misapplied phrase, “survival of the fittest”) suggested to him that a linguistic tradition rooted in “a small island placed between two countries which speak [English]” was not fit for survival. In writing of Irish, Synge deploys the vocabulary of early nineteenth-century linguistics, which depicted language as an organism that grows and decays. For an author forever affected by his initial traumatic encounter with Darwin, the understanding that Irish was a biological entity — and that as such it was subject to the laws of evolution — was potentially alarming. The implication of Synge’s use of horticultural vocabulary to discuss the contemporary linguistic status of Ireland (“blossom”, “decay”, “old roots”, “new growth”) is that the heightened Hiberno-English utilized in his plays is a vigorous hybrid resulting from the grafting of an Irish language shoot onto the stronger stock of English. In Darwinian terms, Hiberno-English is the “new and improved form” that inevitably replaces the outmoded “old forms” of enfeebled Irish and what Synge considered to be the inadequate English of a colonized people.  The popular concept of the perfected nature of the hybrid plant underlines such references to Hiberno-English. In contemplating the future of Irish, Synge ultimately overcomes the nihilism that evolutionary theory had imparted in him during his youth; “pure” Irish might become extinct, but its rhythm and energy would survive in the literary Hiberno-English of Playboy of he Western World and its ilk.

On February 28, 2016, theatre practitioners and scholars come together at the behest of Prof. Keri Walsh at Fordham University, NYC for Waking the Feminists, the movement for equality for women in Irish Theatre. Practitioners will include comedian Maeve Higgins (of RTÉ’s Naked Camera) and Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director of NY’s Mint Theatre. Scholars will include high-profile Irish Studies Professors, Clair Wills of Princeton and Lucy McDiarmid of Montclair State. Panels will emphasize the history of the issues and share ideas for a more inclusive theatre in Ireland. Full details in attached program and at links.

In John Millington Synge’s dramas The Tinker’s Wedding and The Well of the Saints (1905) and The Tinker’s Wedding (published 1907), peripatetic characters unconscious of ageing, sinfulness or ugliness live in a pre-lapsarian state that is disrupted by contact with the fallen realms of the Church and proprietorship. At the close of both, the by now tainted nomads reject any further dealings with the corrupting and implicitly entwined ideologies of capitalism and established religion and attempt to return to their original condition. The plays both centre on the loss of innocence of the wanderer foolish enough to initiate dealings with God’s representative and the earthly values that he is ultimately seen to uphold. In a reversal of the folkloric associations of the rambler from which the plot of The Tinker’s Wedding derives,  worldliness is represented by the dogmatic churchmen and their nominally pious congregations, naivety and a genuine closeness to real divinity and pre-capitalist artlessness by the animistic peoples of the road. In short, despite their mythic echoes, both of these plays are deeply engaged with Revival-era debates on religious practices, economic transformation, and cultural difference and constitute significant responses by Synge to the wider cultural shifts of late nineteenth-century Ireland.

By reconstructing the history through which Ireland and the Irish were degraded via representations incorporating disability, this essay reads the early nationalist response to Cathleen ni Houlihan as an intense identification with a narrative of cure or rehabilitation. The fraught connotations of disability and nationality in turn-of-the-century Ireland gave Yeats and Gregory’s play dramatic power and tragic significance. The Old Woman’s transformation from debility to capacity offers a revolutionary symbol of rejuvenation and rehabilitation. But the play itself complicates the narrative of cure even as it presents it: Cathleen’s rehabilitation is achieved through Michael’s willingness to face disablement or death on her behalf. The symbol of a fit and able Ireland is sustained through the violence of rebellion and its concomitant war injuries, traumas, and scars. In reading the tension between various signifiers of disability in the text—symbolic and literal, physical and mental—this essay argues that Cathleen ni Houlihan’s complex engagement with stereotypes of Irish disability allows it to function as a stimulus for national feeling while remaining, as a literary object, ambivalent.

1916 marked an important moment in the development of modern Ireland. The continuing resonance of the Republican Rising that took place in that year was evident in the now much quoted editorial of The Irish Times (18 Nov 2010) the day after it was announced Ireland was to receive a financial bailout from the EU and IMF. "Was it for this?" the editorial asked, "the men of 1916 died." However, the Rising was but one of a range of significant events in 1916. Beyond the political sphere, 1916
marked the publication of James Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and also saw the foundation of Ireland's first indigenous film production company, The Film
Company of Ireland, whose co-founder James Mark Sullivan was arrested after the Rising and charged with complicity. 1916 was also the year in which Ireland was aligned to Greenwich
Mean Time for the first time, supplanting Dublin Mean Time, bringing the island temporally closer to the rest of the United Kingdom in the same year that would mark an important point in the changing political relationship between the UK and Ireland.
Towards 2016: 1916 and Irish Literature, Culture & Society is cognisant of the multiple perspectives
and events that are associated with 1916 in Ireland and their continuing relevance to Irish literature, culture and society. The collection considers a broad range of cultural forms and societal issues, including politics, theatre, traditional music, poetry, James Joyce, greyhound sports, graphic novels, contemporary fiction, documentary, language, political representation, and the Irish economy with contributions from both emerging academics and established scholars. Also featured is an interview with acclaimed film director and novelist Neil Jordan (conducted by novelist Patrick McCabe) on his life and work, including his biopic Michael Collins (1996), a work which includes one of the most memorable renderings of the Rising and its aftermath. Among the questions considered in the collection are: What were the formative influences on one of leaders of the Rising, James Connolly? What effect had the Rising on Ireland's fledgling labour movement? What impact did the Rising have on the Abbey and Irish theatre? What connects 1916, James Joyce, and the Cuban Revolution? What is the relevance of 1916 to Irish traditional music? What place has 1916 in contemporary Irish fiction and poetry? What are the relations between the Rising, sequential art, popular culture, and memory? A century after the 1916 Proclamation spoke of equality between women and men, could Ireland be finally about to realise equal gender distribution in politics? Does 'Irish sovereignty', a central concern of the Rising leaders, have any relevance for Ireland in the contemporary globalised and European Union context?

Cathleen ni Houlihan’s resonant central image of the nation-as-woman/queen has become one that later generations of Irish dramatists respond to and critique. This exploration will suggest that this image inspired little respect in the drama produced by the conflicted post-war Irish in England in particular, who felt allegiance neither to the motherland they were obliged to leave nor to their adopted mother, Britannia. This outlook will be linked to the punk movement of 1970s Britain, which was arguably one in which the offspring of post-war Irish immigrants played a pivotal role and whose anarchist message was disseminated worldwide by a defaced image of Queen Elizabeth II. Such analysis will be used to contextualize the work of British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who has been repeatedly labelled a “punk playwright,” and to suggest that the reduced “queen” of his most iconoclastic play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), negates both the female sovereign of the land of his birth and Yeats and Gregory’s seemingly failed Irish alternative.