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Irish theatre

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Theatre

   Oscar Wilde remains one of Ireland's best-known playwrights
   Oscar Wilde remains one of Ireland's best-known playwrights

   The history of Irish theatre begins with the rise of the English
   administration in Dublin at the start of the 17th century. Over the
   next 400 years this small country was to make a disproportionate
   contribution to drama in English.

   In the early days of its history, theatrical productions in Ireland
   tended to serve the political purposes of the administration, but as
   more theatres opened and the popular audience grew, a more diverse
   range of entertainments were staged. Many Dublin-based theatres
   developed links with their London equivalents and performers and
   productions from the British capital frequently found their way to the
   Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights from William Congreve to
   George Bernard Shaw found it necessary to go abroad to establish
   themselves.

   At the beginning of the 20th century, theatres and theatre companies
   dedicated to the staging of Irish plays and the development of
   indigenous writers, directors and performers began to emerge. This
   allowed many of the most significant Irish dramatists to learn their
   trade and establish their reputations at home rather than in Britain or
   the United States.

Small beginnings

   Although there would appear to have been performances of plays on
   religious themes in Ireland from as early as the 14th century, the
   first well-documented instance of a theatrical production in Ireland is
   a 1601 staging of Gorboduc presented by Lord Mountjoy Lord Deputy of
   Ireland in the Great Hall in Dublin Castle. The play had been written
   by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton for the 1561/2 Christmas
   festivities at the Inner Temple in London and appears to have been
   selected because it was a story of a divided kingdom descending into
   anarchy that was applicable to the situation in Ireland at the time of
   the performance. Mountjoy started a fashion, and private performances
   became quite commonplace in great houses all over Ireland over the
   following thirty years.

The Court in Kilkenny

   In 1642, as a result of the English Civil War, Dublin Royalists were
   forced to flee the city. Many of them went to Kilkenny to join a
   confederacy of Old English and Irish that formed in that city. Kilkenny
   had a tradition of dramatic performance going back to 1366, and the
   Dublin company, much attenuated, set up in their new home. At least one
   new play was published in Kilkenny; A Tragedy of Cola's Fury, OR,
   Lirenda's Misery, a blatantly political work with the Lirenda of the
   title being an anagram of Ireland.

   With the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, John Ogilby was
   commissioned to design the triumphal arches and write masques for the
   new king's entrance into London. Ogilby was reinstated as Master of the
   Revels and returned to Dublin to open a new theatre in Smock Alley.
   Although starting well, this new theatre was essentially under the
   control of the administration in Dublin castle and staged mainly
   pro-Stuart works and Shakespearean classics. As a result, Irish
   playwrights and actors of real talent were drawn to London.

The Restoration

   An early example of this trend is William Congreve, one of the most
   important writers for the late 18th London stage. Although born in
   Yorkshire, Congreve grew up in Ireland and studied with Jonathan Swift
   in Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating, Congreve
   moved to London to study law at the Temple and pursue a literary
   career. His first play, The Old Bachelor (1693) was sponsored by John
   Dryden, and he went on to write at least four more plays. The last of
   these, The Way of the World (1700) is the one Congreve work regularly
   revived on the modern stage. However, at the time of its creation, it
   was a relative failure and he wrote no further works for the theatre.

   With the accession to the throne of William of Orange, the whole ethos
   of Dublin Castle, including its attitude to the theatre, changed. Smock
   Alley stayed in existence until 1811 and new theatres, such as the
   Theatre Royal, Queens' Theatre, and The Gaiety Theatre opened during
   the 19th century. However, the one constant for the next 200 years was
   that the main action in the history of Irish theatre happened abroad,
   mainly in London.

The 18th century

   Oliver Goldsmith
   Enlarge
   Oliver Goldsmith

   The 18th century saw the emergence of two major Irish dramatists,
   Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who were two of the
   most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century.
   Goldsmith (1728–1774) was born in Roscommon and grew up in extremely
   rural surroundings. He entered Trinity College in 1745 and graduated in
   1749. He returned to the family home, and in 1751, began to travel,
   finally settling in London in 1756, where he published poetry, prose
   and two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768 and She Stoops to Conquer
   1773. This latter was a huge success and is still regularly revived.

   Sheridan (1751–1816) was born in Dublin into a family with a strong
   literary and theatrical tradition. His mother was a writer and his
   father was manager of Smock Alley Theatre. The family moved to England
   in the 1750s, and Sheridan attended Harrow Public School. His first
   play, The Rivals 1775, was performed at Covent Garden and was an
   instant success. He went on to become the most significant London
   playwright of the late 18th century with plays like The School for
   Scandal and The Critic. He was owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, which
   he bought from David Garrick. The theatre burned down in 1809, and
   Sheridan lived out the rest of his life in reduced circumstances. He is
   buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

The 19th century

   After Sheridan, the next Irish dramatist of historical importance was
   Dion Boucicault (1820–1890). Boucicault was born in Dublin but was sent
   to England to complete his education. At school, he began writing
   dramatic sketches and soon took up acting under the stage name of Lee
   Moreton. His first play was Legend of Devil's Dyke 1838 in which he
   acted himself in Brighton. His first London production was London
   Assurance 1841. This was a great success and he seemed set to become
   the major writer of comedies of his day. However, his next few plays
   were not as successful and Boucicault found himself in debt. He
   recovered some of his reputation with The Corsican Brothers (1852), a
   well constructed melodrama.

   In 1853, he moved to New York, where he soon became a hit with plays
   like The Poor of New York (1857), Dot (1859, based on Charles Dickens's
   The Cricket on the Hearth) and The Octoroon (1859). These plays tackled
   issues such as urban poverty and slavery. Boucicault was also involved
   in getting the 1856 law on copyright passed through Congress. His last
   New York play was The Colleen Bawn (1860). In that year, Boucicault
   returned to London to stage The Colleen Bawn and the play ran for 247
   performances at The Adelphi Theatre. He wrote several more successful
   plays, including The Shaughran (1875) and Robert Emmet (1884). These
   later plays helped perpetuate the stereotype of the drunken, hotheaded,
   garrulous Irishman that had been common on the British stage since the
   time of Shakespeare. Other Irish dramatists of the period include John
   Banim and Gerald Griffin, whose novel The Collegians formed the basis
   for The Colleen Bawn.

   Boucicault is widely regarded as the wittiest Irish dramatist between
   Sheridan and Oscar Wilde (1845–1900). Wilde was born in Dublin into a
   literary family and studied at Trinity College, where he had a
   brilliant career. In 1874 he won a scholarship to Magdalen College,
   Oxford. Here he began his career as a writer, winning the Newdigate
   Prize for his poem Ravenna. His studies were cut short during his
   second year at Oxford when his father died leaving large debts.

   During a short but glittering literary career, Wilde wrote poetry,
   short stories, criticism and a novel, but his plays probably represent
   his most enduring legacy. Wilde's first stage success came with Lady
   Windemere's Fan (1892), which resulted in his becoming the most talked
   about dramatist in London. He followed this up with A Woman of No
   Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and his most famous play The
   Importance of Being Earnest that same year.
   George Bernard Shaw
   Enlarge
   George Bernard Shaw

   With these plays, Wilde came to dominate late- Victorian era British
   theatre. His plays are noted for the lightness of their wit, but he
   also contrived to address some serious issues around sexual and class
   roles and identity, as he wrote himself 'treating the serious things
   lightly and the light things seriously'. Events in Wilde's personal
   life were to overtake his literary success and he died in Paris in
   1900. He remains one of the great figures in the history of Irish
   theatre and his plays are frequently performed all over the
   English-speaking world.

   Wilde's contemporary George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a very
   different kind of writer. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876
   intending to become a novelist. Here he became active in socialist
   politics and became a member of the Fabian Society. He was also a very
   public vegetarian. His writing for the stage was influenced by Henrik
   Ibsen. His early political plays were not popular, but he made a
   breakthrough with John Bull's Other Island (1904). Shaw was extremely
   prolific, and his collected writings filled 36 volumes. Many of his
   plays are now forgotten, but a number, including Major Barbara, Saint
   Joan (usually considered his masterpiece) and Pygmalion are still
   regularly performed. Pygmalion was the basis for the movie My Fair
   Lady, a fact which benefitted the National Gallery of Ireland as Shaw
   had left the royalties of the play to the gallery. A statue to the
   playwright now stands outside the gallery entrance. He won the Nobel
   Prize for Literature in 1924.

The Abbey and after

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

   A sea change in the history of the Irish theatre came with the
   establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre, later to
   become the Abbey Theatre. The history of this theatre is well
   documented, and its importance can be seen from the list of writers
   whose plays were first performed here in the early days of the 20th
   century. These included W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington
   Synge, George Moore, and Sean O'Casey. Equally importantly, through the
   introduction by Yeats, via Ezra Pound, of elements of the Noh theatre
   of Japan, a tendency to mythologise quotidian situations, and a
   particularly strong focus on writings in dialects of Hiberno-English,
   the Abbey was to create a style that held a strong fascination for
   future Irish dramatists. Indeed, it could almost be said that the Abbey
   created the basic elements of a national theatrical style.

   This period also saw a rise in the writing of plays in Irish,
   especially after the formation, in 1928, of An Taidhbhearc, a theatre
   dedicated to the Irish language. The Gate Theatre, also founded in 1928
   under the direction of Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir,
   introduced Irish audiences to many of the classics of the European
   stage.

Mid 20th century

   The twentieth century saw a number of Irish playwrights come to
   prominence. Samuel Beckett is probably the most significant of these.
   Beckett had a long career as a novelist and poet before his first play,
   Waiting for Godot (1953) made him famous. This play, along with his
   second, Endgame, is one of the great works of absurdist theatre.
   Beckett was awarded for the Nobel Prize in 1969.

   The Lyric Theatre, founded in 1944 by Austin Clarke was based in the
   Abbey until 1951 and produced many of Clarke's own verse plays. From
   the mid 1950s, the Unitarian Church at St Stephen's Green, Dublin was
   home to Amharclann an Damer/The Damer Theatre. The Damer produced both
   professional and amateur Irish language theatre. The world premier of
   Brendan Behan's An Giall (The Hostage) took place here in 1957. The
   theatre closed in the late 1970s. Behan went on to be an extremely
   popular dramatist, particularly through his work with Joan Littlewood's
   Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London.

   Other important Irish dramatists of this period include: Denis
   Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, and John B. Keane.

Recent developments

   In general, the Abbey was the dominant influence in theatre in Ireland
   across the 20th century. Beckett's example has been almost entirely
   ignored, although his plays are regularly performed on the Irish stage.
   Behan, in his use of song and direct address to the audience, was
   influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Denis Johnston used modernist
   techniques including found texts and collage, but their works had
   little impact on the dramatists who came after them. Since the 1970s, a
   number of companies have emerged to challenge the Abbey's dominance and
   introduce different styles and approaches. These include Focus Theatre,
   The Children's T Company, the Project Theatre Company, Mangled Ferret,
   Druid Theatre, TEAM and Field Day. These companies have nurtured a
   number of writers, actors, and directors who have since gone on to be
   successful in London, Broadway and Hollywood or in other literary
   fields. These include Roddy Doyle, Peter Sheridan, Brian Friel, Stephen
   Rea, Garry Hynes, Martin McDonagh and Gabriel Byrne.
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