Loyal Women? Marie Jones and Christina Reid

Marie Jones and Christina Reid earned critical and commercial success, with the former breaking through with the Charabanc Theatre Company ensemble in 1983 and Reid emerging via the Lyric Theatre contemporaneously. The latter’s plays reveal a far closer affinity with the traditions of her Orange-supporting family than she conveyed in interviews and has been reflected in scholarly literature. While both writers profess Irish identifications, both tend to emphasize and explore social class along with gender in their lives and work. Being from different but strongly Protestant backgrounds, both were also proximate with Loyalist paramilitaries, writing and interacting with them in some personal or critical capacity. Interviews with Reid, Jones, and the Charabanc women supplement the testimony and insights of female representatives and activists.

Introduction

This book is a synthesis of the political and the creative, telescoping modern history and politics with theatre and television drama. It centres on ten writers: St John Ervine (1883–1971), Thomas Carnduff (1886–1956), John Hewitt (1907–87), Sam Thompson (1916–65), Stewart Parker (1941–88), Graham Reid (1945–), Ron Hutchinson (1947–), Gary Mitchell (1965–), Christina Reid (1942–2015), and Marie Jones (1951–). While never intending to ghettoize Protestant writers, or indeed suggest that only those from this background can write illuminatingly about it, one of the reasons the book does not focus on the work of a playwright like Donegal-born Frank McGuinness—especially ...

Inventing the Myth

This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers–some of whom have been notably active in political life—it uniquely examines tensions going on within. Through its exploration of class division and drama from the early twentieth century to the present, the book restores the progressive and Labour credentials of the community’s recent past along with its literary repercussions, both of which appear in recent decades to have diminished. Drawing on over sixty interviews, unpublished scripts, as well as rarely-consulted archival material, we can see—contrary to a good deal of clichéd polemic and safe scholarly assessment—that Ulster Protestants have historically and continually demonstrated a vigorous creative pulse as well as a tendency towards Left wing and class politics. St John Ervine, Thomas Carnduff, John Hewitt, Sam Thompson, Stewart Parker, Graham Reid, Ron Hutchinson, Marie Jones, Christina Reid, and Gary Mitchell profoundly challenge as well as reflect their communities. Illuminating a diverse and conflicted culture stretching beyond Orange Order parades, the weaving together of the lives and work of each of the writers considered highlights mutual themes and insights on the identity, as if part of some grander tapestry of alternative twentieth century Protestant culture. Ulster Protestantism’s consistent delivery of such dissenting voices counters its monolithic and reactionary reputation.