Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional
Reviews"This book serves to remind us of how much outstanding Irish theatre has been produced in the 21st century by men and women. An important element in that has been the contribution of The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. The awards were "paused" two years ago and are sorely missed. Nicholas Grene's comprehensive and wonderfully written monograph deserves a wide readership." -- Anthony Roche, The Irish Times, This book serves to remind us of how much outstanding Irish theatre has been produced in the 21st century by men and women. An important element in that has been the contribution of The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. The awards were "paused" two years ago and are sorely missed. Nicholas Grene's comprehensive and wonderfully written monograph deserves a wide readership.
Table Of ContentIntroductionPART I: MAKING IT NEW1. Changing generations, changing styles: Irish theatre in the 1990s2. Belated avant-garde3. Re-imagining SyngeState of play 1: 2006PART II: PAST AND PRESENT4. Live history5. After the Troubles6. Strategies of adaptationState of play 2: 2016PART III: THE POLITICS OF GENDER7. Waking the feminists: women's voices8. Masculinity and its discontents9. Women writing womenState of play 3: 2020-2Conclusion
SynopsisAn in-depth study of Irish theatre in the contemporary period, including major companies and playwrights, that draws on first-hand experience and interviews with theatre makers., Irish Theatre in the Twenty-First Century is the first in-depth study of the subject. It analyses the ways in which theatre in Ireland has developed since the 1990s when emerging playwrights Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, and Enda Walsh turned against the tradition of lyrical eloquence with a harsh and broken dramatic language. Companies such as Blue Raincoat, the Corn Exchange, and Pan Pan pioneered an avant-garde dramaturgy that no longer privileged the playwright. This led to new styles of production of classic Irish works, including the plays of Synge, mounted in their entirety by Druid. The changed environment led to a re-imagining of past Irish history in the work of Rough Magic and ANU, plays by Owen McCafferty, Stacey Gregg, and David Ireland, dramatizing the legacy of the Troubles, and adaptations of Greek tragedy by Marina Carr and others reflecting the conditions of modern Ireland. From 2015, the movement #WakingTheFeminists led to a sharpened awareness of gender. While male playwrights showed a toxic masculinity on the stage, a generation of female dramatists including Carr, Gregg, and Nancy Harris gave voice to the experiences of women long suppressed in conservative Ireland. For three separate periods, 2006, 2016, 2020-2, the author served as one of the judges for the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards, attending all new productions across the island of Ireland. This allowed him to provide the detailed overview of the 'state of play' of Irish theatre in each of those times which punctuate the book as one of its most innovative features. Drawing also on interviews with Ireland's leading theatre makers, Grene provides readers with a close-up understanding of Irish theatre in a period when Ireland became for the first time a fully modernized, secular, and multi-ethnic society.