Which Fiddler Calls the Tune? The Playboy Riots and the Politics of Nationalist Theatre Spectatorship

1998 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Trotter
Keyword(s):  
William Butler Yeats ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Irish Drama

In October of 1903, The United Irishman, a leading newspaper of the Irish nationalist movement, published an essay by William Butler Yeats entitled “The Irish National Theatre and Three Sorts of Ignorance.” Yeats wrote this essay after an infuriated nationalist community protested the Irish National Theatre Society's production of John Millington Synge's play, In the Shadow of the Glen. In response to Yeats's admonishment of the nationalist movement for putting politics over aesthetics in their creation and judgment of Irish drama, Arthur Griffith, the editor of the newspaper, added some remarks of his own:Mr. Yeats does not give any reason why if the Irish National Theatre has no propaganda save that of good art it should continue to call itself either Irish or National. If the Theatre be solely an Art Theatre, then its plays can be fairly criticized from the standpoint of art. But whilst it calls itself Irish National its productions must be considered and criticised as Irish National productions.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Performance Examining ◽  
Foundational Work ◽  
Bernard Shaw ◽  
The Impact

The familiar narrative in this field has focused on playwrights: from the foundational work of W. B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory, and J. M. Synge of the early twentieth-century national theatre movement to contemporary figures such as Martin McDonagh, Marina Carr, and Enda Walsh, sometimes including Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett. These playwrights are all given detailed analysis in this volume, while extending the conspectus to the full phenomenon of modern Irish theatre. Two sections of the book are devoted to performance, examining the neglected work of directors and designers, as well as exploring acting styles and playing spaces. While the Abbey, as Ireland’s national theatre, has been of central importance, individual chapters bring out the contesting voices of women in a male-dominated arena, the position of Irish-language theatre, and ‘little theatres’ that challenged the hegemony of the Abbey. The middle of the twentieth century saw what amounted to a new revival of Irish drama with the emergence of a generation of playwrights responding in innovative ways to a modernizing Ireland, again diversified by the establishment of regional companies and alternative dramaturgical directions from the 1970s. The contemporary period in Irish theatre has featured a movement beyond scripted plays to more experimental work. The impact and interactions of Irish theatre are finally placed within the wider world of the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. The forty-one chapters of the volume offer the most comprehensive analysis to date of modern Irish theatre.

How Cathleen Became Mrs Monihan: Sara Allgood's ‘Grave Acting’ and Irish Female Performance

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-374
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Brewer Redwine
Keyword(s):  
William Butler Yeats ◽  
English Department ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Film Showing ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Lady Gregory ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Female Performance ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
The Impact

Sara Allgood was an integral member of the Abbey Theatre from its opening in December 1904, yet her presence in its histories or in the growing national theatre movement of the time tends to be rather peripheral. Drawing on archival research in the Berg Collection and the Abbey Theatre Archives, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine argues here for the centrality of Allgood in the experiments of William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory, and reveals the complicated class and religious fissures that surrounded the performance of Irish female identity in which Allgood was embroiled. By tracing her own trajectory, Redwine also challenges the dominant narratives of the Abbey Theatre that present it as distinct from earlier nationalist theatre movements, exploring the impact of the tableaux of the all-female street theatre group on the images of women presented on the Abbey stage. Further, she draws important connections between Allgood's work on the stage and her later work in Hollywood film, showing how she challenged stereotypes consistently to present a new kind of Irish female performance. Elizabeth Brewer Redwine lectures in the English Department at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, and is the co-editor with Amrita Ghosh of the forthcoming Tagore and Yeats: a Postcolonial Re-Envisioning. Her current research project, titled Written for Her to Act: Female Performance and Collaboration, examines Yeats's and Synge's collaborations with actresses at the Abbey Theatre.

scholarly journals Seanchan 's Quest Restoring of the Poet's Right in Yeasts' Play The King's Threshold

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Fawziya Mousa Ghanim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
William Butler Yeats ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Twentieth Century Literature ◽  
Lady Gregory ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Century Literature

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the prominent Irish poet and dramatist was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Revival, and together with lady Gregory and Edward Martyn established the Abby Theatre, and served as its chief playwright during its early years. He was awarded the Noble Prize in literature for his always inspired poetry which in a highly artistic form gave expression to the spirit of a whole nation. The paper aims at analyzing the poet's quest for social freedom and poet's right in the state. The King's Threshold was first performed by the Irish National Theatre Society at the Molesworth Hall, in Dublin on 7 October, 1903. It is founded upon a Midieval-Irish story of the demands of the poets at the court of King Guaire at Gort, Co. Galway; it was also influenced by Edwin Ellis's play Sancan the bard (1905) which was published ten years earlier, by Edwin Ellis.

scholarly journals Multilingual Theatre in Brittany: Celtic Enlightenment and Cosmopolitanism

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297
Author(s):  
Eva Urban
Keyword(s):  
Northern Irish ◽  
Research Fellowship ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Welsh Language ◽  
Senior Research Fellow ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Senior Research ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
The University

In this article Eva Urban describes a historical tradition of Breton enlightenment theatre, and examines in detail two multilingual contemporary plays staged in Brittany: Merc’h an Eog / Merch yr Eog / La Fille du Saumon (2016), an international interceltic co-production by the Breton Teatr Piba and the Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru (the Welsh-language national theatre of Wales); and the Teatr Piba production Tiez Brav A Oa Ganeomp / On avait de jolies maisons (2017). She examines recurring themes about knowledge, enlightenment journeys, and refugees in Brittany in these plays and performances, and presents the argument that they stage cosmopolitan and intercultural philosophical ideas. Eva Urban is Senior Research Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen's University Belfast. She has held a Région de Bretagne Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Centre for Breton and Celtic Studies, University of Rennes 2, a research lectureship in the English Department, University of Rennes 2, and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Community Politics and the Peace Process in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama (Peter Lang, 2011) and has published articles in New Theatre Quarterly, Etudes Irlandaises, Caleidoscopio, and chapters in book collections.

The Russian nationalist movement at low ebb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Verkhovsky
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Subsequent Increase ◽  
Nationalist Movement

This chapter examines changes in the Russian nationalist movement from Russia’s annexation of Crimea until the State Duma elections in September 2016. Since 2014, the nationalist movement has been split over which side to support in the war in Ukraine. Then, with the subsequent increase in state repression of ultra-rightists, the movement lapsed into total decline. The chapter traces activities in various sectors of Russian nationalism, discussing the separate trajectories of the pro-Kremlin and oppositional nationalists, as well as the latter group’s further subdivision into groups that support or oppose the ‘Novorossiia programme’. Attention is paid to the complex relationship and interaction between the various groups of nationalists, as well as to their interaction with the powers-that-be and with the liberal opposition.

Yeats's Barfieldian Rebellion: Locating Yeats's Synthetic Symbolism in Barfield's Evolution of Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Clayton McReynolds
Keyword(s):  
William Butler Yeats ◽  
Evolution Of Consciousness ◽  
The World

In this paper, I draw on Barfield's theory of the evolution of consciousness and language to argue that William Butler Yeats employs language in his poetry in a way which resembles the older, ‘organic’ poetry Barfield describes. I observe how Yeats's ‘concrete’ understanding allowed him to weave a rich web of meaning into his poetry without feeling confined by T.S. Eliot's ‘dissociation of sensibility’. Many of Yeats's Modernist contemporaries struggled to bridge a perceived gap between thought and feeling, but Yeats's view of the world as innately symbolic allowed him to use language both literally and symbolically at once, speaking simultaneously of a literal rock, a symbol for stasis, and an emblem of the idée fixe. Thus, Yeats creates, in Barfield's terms, ‘organic’ poetry where the multilayered meanings arise naturally from Yeats's understanding. I further note how Yeats attempts to create a mythology in A Vision that would function much as Barfield describes mythology operating in ancient, concrete societies. Through this study, I hope to illuminate both the interconnectedness of Yeats's symbolic metaphysic and poetic technique and the relevance of Barfield for understanding Yeats and, perhaps, other poets finding new ways to communicate through an evolving language.

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