CUMANN na nGAEDHEAL AND THE ABBEY THEATRE, 1922–32

2002 ◽  
pp. 96-121
Keyword(s):  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Cumann Na Ngaedheal

From Brigit to Bailegangaire : The Development of Tom Murphy's Mommo Trilogy

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-339
Author(s):  
Shaun Richards
Keyword(s):  
Causal Chain ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Irish Famine ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Relationship Of

Tom Murphy's Bailegangaire, premiered by Druid Theatre, Galway, in 1985 has its origins in a three-part TV drama which Murphy started planning in 1981. Of the three scripts only one, Brigit, was screened by RTÉ in 1988, The Contest became A Thief of a Christmas which was staged by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1988, and Mommo, the last of the projected trilogy, became Bailegangaire. In 2014, nearly 30 years after its premiere, Druid staged Bailegangaire in tandem with Brigit which Murphy had reworked for the theatre, a pairing which, in bringing the fraught relationship of Mommo and her husband, Seamus, to the fore, helped clarify the grounds of the trauma informing her endless, but never completed narrative. This essay uses Murphy's notebooks and drafts, along with a comparison of Brigit in both its TV and theatre forms, to show how Murphy progressively refined Bailegangaire into a drama whose causal chain stretches back to psychological states forged under the stresses of the Irish Famine.

The Strange Radicalism of Thomas Carnduff and St John Ervine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connal Parr
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
First World War ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Unpublished Work ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a leg in the First World War, are all discussed. Carnduff’s own tumultuous life is reflected through his complicated Orange affiliation, gut class-consciousness, poetry, unpublished work, contempt for the local (and gentrified) Ulster artistic scene, and veneration of socially conscious United Irishman James Hope. It concludes with an assessment of their respective legacies and continuing import.

scholarly journals Protection, economic war and structural change: the 1930s in Ireland

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (107) ◽  
pp. 250-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Peter Neary ◽  
Cormac Ó Gráda
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Industrial Sector ◽  
Home Market ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Political Controversy ◽  
Cumann Na Ngaedheal ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Economic Outlook

If I were an Irishman, I should find much to attract me in the economic outlook of your present government towards greater self-sufficiency. (J.M. Keynes)The 1930s were years of political turmoil and economic crisis and change in Ireland. Economic activity had peaked in 1929, and the last years of the Cumann na nGaedheal government (in power since the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922) saw substantial drops in output, trade and employment. The policies pursued after Fianna Fáil’s victory in the election of February 1932 were therefore influenced both by immediate economic pressures and by the party’s ideological commitments. The highly protectionist measures associated with de Valera and Lemass — key men of the new régime — sought both to create jobs quickly and to build more gradually a large indigenous industrial sector, producing primarily for the home market.Political controversy complicated matters. De Valera was regarded as a headstrong fanatic by the British establishment. His government’s refusal to hand over to Britain the so-called ‘land annuities’ — a disputed item in the Anglo-Irish settlement of 1921 — led to an ‘economic war’, in which the British Treasury sought payment instead through penal ‘emergency’ tariffs on Irish imports. The Irish imposed their own duties, bounties and licensing restrictions in turn. The economic war hurt Irish agriculture badly; the prices of fat and store cattle dropped by almost half between 1932 and mid-1935. Farmers got some relief through export bounties and the coal-cattle pacts (quota exchanges of Irish cattle for British coal) of 1935-7, but Anglo-Irish relations were not normalised again until the finance and trade agreements of the spring of 1938, and the resolution of the annuities dispute did not mean an end to protection. The questions ‘Who won the economic war?’ and ‘What was the impact of protection on the Irish economy?’ are analytically distinct, but they are not that easy to keep apart in practice.

Dialogism and the Theatre Event: Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw's ‘Medea’, 2001

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Clara Armand
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Student ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Dramatic Character ◽  
Artistic Collaboration ◽  
The University ◽  
Critical Social

The long-standing artistic collaboration between director Deborah Warner and actress Fiona Shaw has, argues Clara Armand, raised the powers of performance to a form of genuine authorship. Her article explores the distinctive qualities of their scenic writing as evident in the production of Medea which transferred from the Abbey Theatre to London's West End on 30 January 2001, and went on to play at the Queen's Theatre for over ten weeks. She makes comparisons between the production of Medea and those of the earlier Footfalls and Richard II, focusing on Warner's challenging ways of transforming pre-existing playtexts and theatrical spaces so as to enunciate statements about the contemporary world. Shaw's interpretation of Medea is explored with an emphasis on the actress's ability to maintain truthful identification with the dramatic character and make it reverberate with her own critical social stance as an artist. The discussion of Medea as seen at the Queen's Theatre is developed in the light of Bakhtin's concept of dialogism and related ideas. The article is complemented by the interview with Fiona Shaw which follows. Clara Armand teaches acting and directs at the Stratford Circus Theatre in Stratford East, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Reading.

The Abbey Theatre

1913 ◽  
Vol 2 (24) ◽  
pp. 628
Author(s):  
Ernest A. Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Abbey Theatre
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