Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre

This book addresses the notion posed by Thomas Kilroy in his definition of a playwright-s creative process: -We write plays, I feel, in order to populate the stage-. It gathers eclectic reflections on contemporary Irish theatre from both Irish theatre practitioners and international academics. The eighteen contributions offer innovative perspectives on Irish theatre since the early 1990s up to the present, testifying to the development of themes explored by emerging and established playwrights as well as to the (r)evolutions in practices and approaches to the stage that have taken place in the last thirty years. This cross-disciplinary collection devotes as much attention to contextual questions and approaches to the stage in practice as it does to the play text in its traditional and revised forms. The essays and interviews encourage dialectic exchange between analytical studies on contemporary Irish theatre and contributions by theatre practitioners.

Anne Etienne is Lecturer in Modern Drama at University College Cork, Ireland. She has published widely on theatre censorship in twentieth-century England, and is the main author of Theatre Censorship: from Walpole to Wilson (2007). She is currently expanding her work on Arnold Wesker. Her research in contemporary Irish theatre is devoted to Corcadorca Theatre Company.
Thierry Dubost is Professor of Literatures in English at the University of Caen Basse-Normandie, France. He is the author of Struggle, Defeat or Rebirth: Eugene O'Neill's Vision of Humanity (1997) and The Plays of Thomas Kilroy (2007). He has co-edited a number of volumes on Irish drama and culture.

Foreword; Thomas Kilroy.- 1. Introduction; Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost.- 2. Innovation meets Evocation: Tom Mac Intyre's plays at the Peacock Theatre; Marie Kelly.- 3. From Dementia to Utopia: Tragedy and Transcendence in Frank McGuinness' The Hanging Gardens; Matthieu Kolb.- 4. Women and Scarecrows: Marina Carr's Stage Bodies; Mary Noonan.- 5. McDonagh's True, Lonesome West; Maria Isabel Seguro.- 6. The physical and verbal theatre of Michael West; Nicholas Grene.- 7. A Dark Rosebud on the Irish Stage: Ailís Ní Ríain's Tallest Man in the World; Thierry Dubost.- 8. Death of A Playwright; Geoff Gould.- 9. Looking back and forward on sound design: Irish theatre transformed; Cormac O'Connor.- 10. Lightning in a Bottle: the BrokenCrow Experiment; Ronan FitzGibbon.- 11. Interview with Bríd Ó Gallchoir; Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost.- 12. Interview with Pat Kinevane; Anne Etienne.- 13. Interview with Mark O'Rowe; Thierry Dubost and Anne Etienne.- 14. Enda Walsh, in conversation with Ger FitzGibbon.- 15. Slump and Punk in Ray Scannell's Losing Steam: Envisioning Corcadorca; Anne Etienne.- 16. Through A Glass, Darkly: Priests on the Contemporary Irish Stage; Virginie Roche-Tiengo.- 17. Populating the Irish Stage with (Dis)Abled Bodies: Sanctuary by Christian O'Reilly and the Blue Teapot Company; Katarzyna Ojrzy-ska.- 18. Queering the Irish Stage: Shame, Sexuality, and the Politics of Testimonial; Cormac O'Brien.- 19. A Gendered Absence: Feminist theatre, Glasshouse Productions, and the #WTF movement; Patricia O'Beirne.