scholarly journals Domesticity in the trilogies of Sean O’Casey and Yu Ch'i-jin

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-113
Author(s):  
Ji Hyea Hwang
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Korea ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Close Study

This article examines Sean O’Casey and Yu Ch’i-jin’s portrayal of the domestic realm in the Dublin Trilogy of the 1920s and Nongchon Trilogy of the 1930s, respectively. Yu is indebted to O’Casey for his themes and style in playwrighting, for he saw O’Casey’s works as models for his own dramatic depictions of colonial Korea. A close study of Yu’s approach and the two trilogies reveal that his “deep-rooted admiration” for O’Casey does not indicate Yu’s aims to Westernize Korean theatre, but rather reveals his desire to impact the Korean audiences with realistic depictions of their everyday struggles. Using Lionnet and Shih’s idea of “minor transnationalism,” I argue that this lateral relationship is an instance of transcolonial solidarity in which Yu echoes O’Casey’s methodology to contribute to establishing a national theatre and drama tradition as did O’Casey to the Abbey Theatre.

The Riot of Spring

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Burke
Keyword(s):  
Western World ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps

The riots that met the first production of J. M. Synge’sPlayboy of the Western Worldin 1907 have become one of the landmarks of Irish theatre history, and have usually been interpreted in terms of competing definitions of a national theatre. This chapter chooses instead to put the 1907Playboy of the Western Worldriots in the context of the very similar response that met the première of Igor Stravinsky’sThe Rite of Spring(Le sacre du printemps) in 1913. By understanding Synge’s work in the context of a modernist understanding of primitivism and aesthetic shock, this chapter argues that we can develop a new understanding of what became known as ‘peasant drama’ in the early Abbey theatre, and begin to see it not as a form of realism, but as a critique of previous dramatic forms.

O’Casey, Sean (1880–1964)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Pine
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Close Association ◽  
World War ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Blood Sacrifice ◽  
Political Essays

Born into Dublin tenement life in 1880, Sean O’Casey (originally John O’Casey) went on to become one of Ireland’s most important playwrights, best known for his realist Dublin Trilogy, which premiered at the Abbey Theatre and included The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926). The four-act Plough and the Stars provoked riots on its second night as protestors objected to the play’s critique of Irish nationalism. O’Casey’s close association with the Abbey ended in 1928 when W. B. Yeats rejected his play about World War I, The Silver Tassie, which combined Realism and Expressionism. O’Casey moved to England in 1926, where he married the actress Eileen Carey, and he continued to write politically focused plays for English and American stages. He also wrote political essays and six volumes of autobiography. O’Casey’s family were working-class Dubliners who struggled financially after his father was seriously injured, and O’Casey started work at the age of fourteen. This first-hand understanding of gruelling poverty informed his life-long Socialism and his involvement in the 1913 Dublin Lockout strike. In The Plough and the Stars, his critique of nationalism centered on the disparity between the rhetoric of freedom through blood sacrifice and the hardships of working-class life.

Celtic Revival

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Weihman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Irish Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Celtic Revival ◽  
Literary Revival ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Douglas Hyde

The Celtic Revival was a late-nineteenth-century resurgence of interest in Celtic history, languages and myths that crossed through many disciplines, most notably cultural anthropology, art history and literature. The Celtic Revival was most influential in Ireland, where it inspired the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; Cumann Lúthchleas Gael) in 1884, which was dedicated to the recovery of ancient Irish sports. In 1893, Douglas Hyde (1860–1949) helped to establish the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) in order to preserve the Irish language and promote Irish culture. The Celtic Revival is also associated with the Irish Literary Revival. The latter, which covers the renaissance of Irish literature and poetry that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is also referred to as the ‘Celtic Twilight’, a term borrowed from the title of William Butler Yeats’s (1865–1939) 1893 volume. Inspired by the poetry of Thomas Moore (1478–1535), James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849) and Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886), as well as by the folktales published by Standish James O’Grady (1869–1928), Yeats established both the Irish Literary Society in London and the National Literary Society in Dublin in 1892. In 1899, Yeats established the Irish Literary Theatre, which would become the Irish National Theatre Society at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904.

Cyberactivism and the Emergence of #TeamPanti

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
FINTAN WALSH
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Stage ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Industrial Dispute ◽  
The Impact

On 1 February 2014, Ireland's best-known queer performer, drag artist Panti (Rory O'Neill), delivered a ten-minute speech on the main stage of the Abbey Theatre following a production of James Plunkett's play The Risen People (1958). The oration was the last instalment in a series of so-called ‘Noble Calls’ programmed by the national theatre, in which invited artists, activists and public intellectuals spoke after the production about an issue of pressing concern. Plunkett's drama explores the impact on a family of the 1913 Dublin Lockout, during which approximately 20,000 people took to the streets in an industrial dispute over working conditions. Marking the centenary of the event, the production and its Noble Calls commemorated the original incident, while also encouraging reflection on the state of contemporary Ireland, and the public's aspirations for a country deeply affected by recent social, cultural and economic upheavals.

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.

Avon Calling: The Influence of Frank Benson on the Irish Theatre

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-235
Author(s):  
James Moran
Keyword(s):  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Sean O'casey ◽  
Abbey Theatre

This essay reassesses the position of the British actor-manager Frank Benson within the Irish theatrical tradition. Benson has been derided for his involvement in premiering Diarmuid and Grania for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1901, a production described by Gerard Fay as ‘the last time Dubliners had to call in English actors before they could see a production of an Irish play’. However, as this essay argues, that production may not have been as badly received as Fay implies, and in any case should scarcely occlude the long-term influence of Benson's numerous well-received Dublin performances. The earlier productions given by the Benson's company exerted an influence on the dramatic vision of the young Seán O'Casey, who acted out the troupe's most famous Shakespearean scenes, and later incorporated what he had seen into the Dublin trilogy. Likewise Yeats travelled to Stratford specifically to watch Benson perform, and found there a set of ideas about modernity, regionalism, and patronage that would inform the poet's own playwriting and management of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

The Abbey Theatre and the Irish State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Arrington
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Fianna Fail ◽  
Artistic Freedom ◽  
The Aesthetic

The aesthetic principles of education and representation that Yeats and Gregory set out at the founding of the Abbey Theatre enabled the directorate to cultivate a relationship with the state that ensured the theatre’s place as the Irish National Theatre. Yet this was a relationship that demanded compromises on both sides—in the negotiation for a state subsidy, finally granted in 1925, in issues of censorship over controversial plays such asThe Plough and the Starsin 1926, and in the uneasy relationship with the Fianna Fáil government that came to power in 1932. Even so, at least during Yeats’s lifetime, the Abbey directors were able to resist the complete ideological co-option of the theatre, and any compromises to artistic freedom were made willingly in order to ensure the continued alliance of the theatre and the state.

The Abbey Theatre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paige Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
George Moore ◽  
National Theater ◽  
The Many

The Abbey Theatre is a term that has come to encapsulate the many iterations of the National Theatre of Ireland. Located in Dublin, the Abbey Theatre was originally and literally the name of a building purchased in 1904 by the theater’s English patron Annie Horniman. The precursor of the Abbey was the Irish Literary Theatre (ILT), founded in 1897 by Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, Edward Martyn, George Moore, and W. B. Yeats. Like many modernist movements and institutions, the ILT articulated its aims in a founding manifesto that announced the intention to stage "certain Celtic and Irish plays" and to embody "that freedom to experiment which is not found in theatres of Europe and without which no new movement in art and literature can succeed" (Gregory 1965: 9). In 1902 the ILT merged with the acting company of W. B. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company, and in 1903 this company was named the Irish National Theatre Society. In 1906 it became the National Theatre Society, Ltd., a professional company under the directorship of Gregory, Yeats, and J. M. Synge. The Abbey remains today the national theater of Ireland, and also houses the smaller, experimental Peacock Theatre.

Places of Performance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Morash
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Specific Work ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Neutral Space ◽  
The Many

From the historically resonant Abbey Theatre, theatre spaces have had an influence on the ways in which Irish theatre has developed over the course of the twentieth century, from the limited proscenium arch stage of the early Abbey to the increasing exploration of found spaces and site-specific work in the 1990s and early twenty-first century. A geography of Irish theatre must take account of the significance of the place of performance in the creation of theatrical meaning. The space of the Abbey, as the national theatre, has been haunted by its past, whereas the aim of the Gate was to create a neutral space for its modernist creations, while utopian plans for an open-air amphitheatre in Achill or radical designs for the Lyric, Belfast, were never realized. The many new theatres of recent times have created untethered spaces without past associations.

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