   #copyright

Abbey Theatre

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Theatre

   A poster for the opening run at the Abbey Theatre from 27 December,
   1904 to 3 January, 1905.
   A poster for the opening run at the Abbey Theatre from 27 December,
   1904 to 3 January, 1905.

   The Abbey Theatre, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland, is
   located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the
   public on 27 December 1904 and, despite losing its original building to
   a fire in 1951, it has continued to stage performances more or less
   continuously to the present day. The Abbey was the first
   state-subsidised theatre in the English-speaking world; from 1925
   onwards it received an annual subsidy from the Irish Free State.

   In its early years, the theatre was closely associated with the writers
   of the Celtic revival, many of whom were involved in its foundation and
   most of whom had plays staged there. The Abbey served as a nursery for
   many of the leading Irish playwrights and actors of the 20th century.
   In addition, through its extensive programme of touring abroad and its
   high visibility to foreign, particularly North American, audiences, it
   has become an important part of the Irish tourist industry.

Before the Abbey

   The founding of the Abbey was the result of the coming together of
   three distinct forces. The first of these was the seminal Irish
   Literary Theatre. Founded by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and W. B.
   Yeats in 1899 - with assistance by George Moore - this theatre had
   presented a number of plays in the Ancient Concert Rooms and the Gaiety
   Theatre, with some critical approval but limited public interest.

   The second thread was the work of two Irish brothers, William and Frank
   Fay. William worked for a time in the 1890s with a touring company in
   Ireland, Scotland and Wales while Frank was heavily involved in amateur
   dramatics in Dublin. After William returned, the brothers began to
   stage productions in halls around the city. Finally, they formed W. G.
   Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company, focused on the development of
   Irish acting talent. In April, 1902, the Fays gave three performances
   of Æ's play Deirdre and Yeats' Cathleen Ní Houlihan in a hall in St
   Theresa's Hall, Clarendon Street in Dublin. The performances played to
   a mainly working-class audience, rather than the usual middle-class
   Dublin theatre-goers. The run was a great success, thanks in part to
   the fact that Maud Gonne played the lead in Yeats' play.

   The third and final element was the presence in Dublin of Annie
   Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman. Horniman was a middle-class Englishwoman
   with some previous experience of theatre production, having been
   involved in the presentation of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man
   in London in 1894. She came to Dublin in 1903 as Yeats' unpaid
   secretary and to make costumes for a production of his play The King's
   Threshold. It was her money that was to make the Abbey Theatre a viable
   reality.

Foundation of the Abbey

   A 1907 engraving of W. B. Yeats, one of the founders of the Abbey
   Theatre.
   Enlarge
   A 1907 engraving of W. B. Yeats, one of the founders of the Abbey
   Theatre.

   In the light of the success of the St Theresa's Hall venture, the Irish
   National Theatre Society was formed in 1903 by Yeats as president, Lady
   Gregory, Æ, Martyn, and John Millington Synge. Funding was provided by
   Annie Horniman. At first, performances were staged in the Molesworth
   Hall. When the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in Lower Abbey Street and
   an adjacent building in Marlborough Street became available after the
   local fire safety authorities closed the Hibernia on fire safety
   grounds, Horniman and William Fay agreed their purchase and refitting
   to meet the needs of the society. On 11 May 1904 the society formally
   accepted Horniman's offer of the use of the building. As Horniman was
   not normally resident in Ireland, the Royal Letters Patent required
   were paid for by her but granted in the name of Lady Gregory. William
   Fay was appointed theatre manager and took on responsibility for
   training the actors in the newly established repertory company. Yeats'
   brother Jack Yeats was commissioned to paint portraits of all the
   leading figures in the society for the foyer and Sarah Purser designed
   some stained glass for the same space.

   On 27 December, the curtains went up on the opening night. The bill
   consisted of three one-act plays, On Baile's Strand and Cathleen Ní
   Houlihan by Yeats, and Spreading the News by Lady Gregory. On the
   second night, In the Shadow of the Glen by Synge replaced the second
   Yeats play and these two bills alternated over a five-night run. Frank
   Fay, playing Cúchulainn in On Baile's Strand, was the first actor on
   the Abbey stage. Although Horniman had designed costumes, neither she
   nor Lady Gregory was present. Horniman had, in fact, returned to
   England and her main role with the Abbey over the coming years, in
   addition to providing funding, was to organise publicity and bookings
   for touring Abbey productions in London and provincial English venues.
   In 1905, Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge decided to turn the theatre into
   a Limited Liability Company without properly consulting Horniman.
   Annoyed by this treatment, she hired Ben Iden Payne, a former Abbey
   employee, to help run her new repertory company in Manchester.

The early years

   The new theatre found itself a great popular success, with large crowds
   turning out for most productions. It was also fortunate in having, in
   Synge, one of the foremost English-language dramatists of the day as a
   key member. The theatre also staged plays by eminent or soon to be
   eminent authors including Yeats, Lady Gregory, Moore, Martyn, Padraic
   Colum, Oliver St John Gogarty, F. R. Higgins, Thomas MacDonagh, (one of
   the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916), T. C. Murray and Lennox
   Robinson. Many of these authors also served on the board, with the
   result that the Abbey gained an enduring reputation as a writers'
   theatre.

   However, things were to take a turn for the worst in January 1907 with
   the opening of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Egged on by
   nationalists who believed that the theatre was not sufficiently
   political and with the pretext of a perceived slight on the virtue of
   Irish womanhood in the use of the word 'shift', a significant portion
   of the crowd rioted, causing the remainder of the play to be acted out
   in dumbshow. Nationalist ire was further provoked by the decision to
   call in the police. Although press opinion soon turned against the
   rioters and the protests (now known as the Playboy Riots) petered out,
   the Abbey was shaken and Synge's next (and last completed) play The
   Tinker's Wedding (1908) was not staged for fear of further
   disturbances.

   That same year, the Fay brothers' association with the theatre ended
   when they emigrated to the United States and the day-to-day management
   of the theatre became the responsibility of Lennox Robinson. On 7 May
   1910, when all the other theatres in the city closed as a mark of
   respect on the death of King Edward VII, Robinson kept the Abbey open.
   The relationship with Annie Horniman was already strained, and when she
   found out about Robinson's decision, she decided to finally sever her
   connection with the Abbey. By her own estimate, she had spent £10,350
   (worth roughly $1 million in 2004 US currency) of her own money on the
   project, a considerable sum for the time.

   With the loss of Horniman, Synge and the Fays, the Abbey under Robinson
   tended somewhat to drift along and suffered from falling public
   interest and box office returns. This trend was halted for a time by
   the emergence of Sean O'Casey as an heir to Synge. O'Casey's career as
   a dramatist began with The Shadow of a Gunman, staged by the Abbey in
   1923. This was followed by Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough
   and the Stars (1926). This last play resulted in riots reminiscent of
   those that had greeted the Playboy nineteen years earlier. Once again,
   scared off by the public reaction, the Abbey rejected O'Casey's next
   play and he emigrated shortly thereafter.

The Abbey after Yeats

   Ninette de Valois at age 16. She ran the Abbey School of Dance and
   provided choreography for a number of Yeats' plays.
   Enlarge
   Ninette de Valois at age 16. She ran the Abbey School of Dance and
   provided choreography for a number of Yeats' plays.

   In 1924, Yeats and Lady Gregory offered the Abbey to the government of
   the Free State as a gift to the Irish people. Despite some reluctance
   on the part of the Department of Finance, the offer was accepted,
   partly at least because of the theatre's commitment to producing works
   in Irish. As a consequence, in 1925 the Abbey became the first theatre
   company in the English-speaking world to be state-maintained. The
   following year, the Abbey School of Acting and the Abbey School of
   Ballet were set up. The latter, which closed in 1933, was run by
   Ninette de Valois, who also provided choreography for a number of
   Yeats' plays.

   Around this time, some additional space was acquired and a small
   experimental theatre, the Peacock, was started downstairs from the main
   theatre. In 1928 Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir set up the Gate
   Theatre, initially using the Peacock to stage important works by
   European and American dramatists. The Gate sought work by new Irish
   playwrights and the story of how one such play came into their hands
   illustrated the fact that the Abbey had now entered a period of
   artistic decline. When Denis Johnston submitted his first play
   Shadowdance to the Abbey, it was rejected by Lady Gregory and returned
   to the author with “The Old Lady says No” written on the title page.
   Johnson decided to rename the play, and The Old Lady Says 'No' was
   staged by the Gate in the Peacock in 1928.

   The tradition of the Abbey as a writer's theatre survived Yeats'
   withdrawal from day-to-day involvement. For example, Frank O'Connor sat
   on the board from 1935 to 1939, serving as Managing Director from 1937,
   and had two plays staged during this period. Unfortunately, he was
   forced to resign after Yeats died. During the 1940s and 1950s, the
   staple fare of the Abbey stage was comic farce set in an idealised
   peasant world, which, if it ever had existed, no longer had much
   relevance for the lives of the majority of Irish citizens. As a result,
   the decline in audience numbers continued. This decline might well have
   been more dramatic but for a number of popular actors, including F. J.
   McCormick, and dramatists, including George Shiels, who could still
   draw a crowd. Another Abbey tenant was Austin Clarke's Dublin Verse
   Speaking Society, later the Lyric Theatre, which operated out of the
   Peacock from 1941 to 1944 and the Abbey from 1944 to 1951.

   On 18 July 1951, the building was destroyed by fire, with only the
   Peacock surviving. The company took a lease on the old Queen's Theatre
   in September and continued in residence in this temporary home until
   1966. The Queen's had been home to the Happy Gang, a team of comedians
   who staged skits, farces and pantomimes to huge audiences. In some
   respect, with its continued diet of peasant comedies, the new tenants
   were not far removed from the old. It is indicative of the state of the
   Abbey's ambitions at the time that neither of the two most interesting
   Irish dramatists to emerge in the 1950s, Brendan Behan and Samuel
   Beckett, featured there. In February 1961 the ruins of the Abbey were
   finally demolished and plans for rebuilding, with a design by Irish
   architect Michael Scott, began. On 3 September 1963, the President of
   Ireland, Eamon de Valera, laid the foundation stone for the new
   theatre. The Abbey reopened on 18 July 1966.

The Abbey since 1966

   The conjunction of a new building, a new generation of dramatists that
   included such figures as Hugh Leonard, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, and
   the growth in Irish tourism with the National Theatre as a key cultural
   attraction helped to bring about a revival in the theatre's fortunes.
   This was further assisted by the theatre's continuing involvement in
   the Dublin Theatre Festival, which began in 1957.

   Plays such as Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come (1964), The Faith Healer
   (1979) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), Murphy's Whistle in the Dark
   (1961) and The Gigli Concert (1983) and Leonard's Da (1973) and A Life
   (1980) helped raise the Abbey's international profile through their
   successful runs in London and on Broadway. However, despite these and
   other successes, the Abbey has continued to play to less-than-full
   houses, averaging less than half capacity in the centenary year, 2004.

   The conjunction of projected debts at the end of 2004 of €2.5 million
   together with reduced state funding, a recovery plan involving the loss
   of one third of the jobs at the theatre, and some bad feeling from the
   earlier winding down of the repertory company led to calls for the
   dismissal of artistic director Ben Barnes. On 6 September, Mr Barnes
   survived a vote of the board but his survival plan was shelved. The
   controversy rumbled on with the publication a few days later of the
   text of an e-mail he sent to some international colleagues in which he
   was highly critical of his employers. He later apologised to the board.
   On 14 September, the Arts Council of Ireland announced the setting up
   of an independent review into ways in which it could support the
   theatre through this crisis. A further complication facing the Abbey in
   its centenary year is the fact that, with the current theatre flagged
   as a potential safety hazard, a long-running search for a site for a
   new building continues with no immediate end in sight. In December
   2004, the theatre celebrated its centenary with a range of events,
   including performances of the original programme by amateur dramatic
   groups from around the country.

   On May 12, 2005 Barnes and Managing Director Brian Jackson resigned
   after it was discovered that a serious error in the company's financial
   reporting had resulted in a serious underestimation of the theatre's
   deficit of €1.85 million.

   On 20 August 2005, the Abbey Theatre Advisory Council approved a plan
   which will see the Abbey's owners, the National Theatre Society, being
   dissolved and replaced by a company limited by guarantee, the Abbey
   Theatre Limited. This was done after the Arts Council of Ireland
   decided to withhold any further funding from the theatre pending the
   resolution of its financial crisis. The new company was expected to be
   established in September 2005.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Theatre"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
