Crossing Borders in Irish Drama and Theatre. Art, Artist and Sacrifice

AbstractAmong the infinite variety of borders crossed in the theatre – social, national, cultural, gender, generic, aesthetic, existential, and many others – this essay focuses on self-reflexive border-crossings in Irish kunstlerdrama (artist-drama) and theatre. Spanning over eighty years, in selected plays from W. B. Yeats’s The King of the Great Clock Tower (1934), through Brian Friel’s Faith Healer (1979), Frank McGuinness’s The Bird Sanctuary (1994) and Marie Jones’s Stones in His Pockets (1999), to Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk (2014), a few forms of theatrical representation of transgressing and/or dissolving boundaries are explored while attempting to delienate which borders need to be respected, which contested, abolished, and then which to be transcended. Artist figures or artworks within drama, embodying the power to move or mediate between different realms of reality, including art and nature, stage and auditorium, life and death, reveal that sacrificial death proves crucial still in a non-sacrificial age, in enabling the artist and/or instigating spiritual fertility. In addition to his/her role, function, potential in affecting social and spiritual life, the representation of the artist necessarily reflects on theatre’s art seeking its own boundaries and opening itself to embrace the audience.

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Altruism: Reflections on a Neglected Aspect in Death Studies

OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying ◽

10.2190/4g02-0afl-gc2g-63k7 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 335-353 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Klaus P. Jankofsky ◽

Uwe H. Stuecher

Keyword(s):

Hospital Setting ◽

Good Death ◽

Human Society ◽

Clinical Experiences ◽

Medieval Period ◽

Life And Death ◽

Death Studies ◽

Infinite Variety ◽

And Behavior ◽

Modern Hospital

Growing out of the authors' previous studies of death (Jankofsky's in literature and in historical documents primarily of the medieval period, and Stuecher's of clinical experiences with terminally ill children and adolescents), this cooperative interdisciplinary article identifies and discusses altruism as a basic trait of human character and behavior and explores its possible implications for the dying person. Altruism can be studied as a phenomenon which is like the “good death/bad death” topos of medieval chroniclers, thus permitting comparative evaluations over long periods of time and in different socioeconomic and political structures. As a trait observable in both the daily realities of a modern hospital setting and in the literary-aesthetic representation of human society and its values in medieval and modern literature, altruism is a part of the infinite variety of humanity's perceptions, activities, and experiences that make up the mosaic of life and death.

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Woman and Home: the Domestic Setting of Late Medieval Spirituality

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400012067 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 159-173 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Diana M. Webb

Keyword(s):

Fifteenth Century ◽

Spiritual Life ◽

Medieval Period ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Life And Death ◽

Italian Women ◽

Medieval Spirituality ◽

Set Up ◽

Domestic Setting ◽

Devotional Reading

‘From the earliest days of Christianity, the domestic community has served as a unit of worship’. In the later medieval period, the home certainly played an important part in the religious observances of many laypeople. By the fifteenth century in England, chapels in private houses were increasingly common, even if they were simply small rooms adapted for the purpose. The practice of informal prayer and private devotional reading did not require special accommodation. We know that individuals prayed in their bedrooms, while Italian women were encouraged to have a bedroom image of the Virgin and to conduct themselves properly in her presence. Italian preachers also thought that children should join in holy play-acting at home, and that they should set up and decorate toy altars. The garden, too, could furnish a setting for the spiritual life. Agnes Paston gives us a haunting glimpse of the life and death of a pious layman in 1453:

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Deprovincializing Brian Friel's Drama in America, 2009 and 2014: Dancing at Lughnasa in Fort Myers, Florida, and Faith Healer in Houston, Texas

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2015.0154 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

pp. 103-116

Author(s):

Richard Rankin Russell

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

The United States ◽

Immigrant Population ◽

Faith Healer ◽

American Theatre ◽

Art Form ◽

Irish Drama ◽

Catch Up ◽

National Profile

While American regional theatre has flourished for decades, hardly any critics with a national profile pay attention to it, but theatre critic Terry Teachout has recently argued that criticism must catch up with this ‘deprovincialized’ drama, drawing upon his viewing of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa in a memorable 2009 production by the Florida Repertory Theatre in Fort Myers. I tentatively explore through that production of Lughnasa what implications its staging in a locale with a strong Hispanic concentration might have for American theatre and for its growing immigrant population as the United States becomes ever more divided, yet still idealizes plurality and immigration. I then assess the Stark Naked Theatre Company's stirring 2014 production of Faith Healer in Houston, Texas. Actors and local critics mostly neglected Irish aspects of the play – unlike their supposed more enlightened New York critics and audiences, who tend to read Irish drama through outmoded stereotypes – and instead privileged its spiritual qualities and its potential for showcasing theatre as an art form.

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