Introduction
Occupied Country
Listen:
We are speaking your language
We are wearing your names
Fathers husbands
We are living your laws
We are your subjects?
Just listen
Our voices are lighter
Must we speak louder
Must we shout?
Our tongues have been tied
Cleft to our palate
Have been cut out
Listen
We are learning our language
Foreign to our ears
We are sounding out
We are on an adventure
There is no turning back
Listen
We have begun to speak
Slipping out of our skins
We change colours don’t
Turn away Look
Open your eyes it is not
So dangerous.
You love us like the Church
Or a zoo animal
In captivity . . .
—Anne Le Marquand Hartigan, excerpt from unpublished poem
Women have always spoken within domestic spheres. Their voices have nurtured children, preserved culture, and encouraged families. And women have even spoken in more public voices: in fiction and in poetry. But now women are weaving their tales under the stage lights, the most public artistic and literary arena of all. They are learning their own dramatic language; with newfound voices, they are saying, “Listen to us; look at our view of life.” This anthology provides a forum for those voices, for that perspective.
As a public and outward act, drama demands interaction among the play, players, and audience; it is inherently an act of socialization. Its ritualistic form requires relevancy to human experience, thus encouraging a communal response to life. Other art forms may portray our outer realities, but drama preeminently shows our struggle to relate to the world around us. As Northrop Frye reminds us, Ireland, with its culture still rooted in the past, is one of the few places an art form as communal as drama is still possible.
Since drama is communal, it is curious that women dramatists have been largely ignored. Such neglect is a loss to performers and other theatre practitioners, to audiences, and to students of the drama, for, as Hélène Cixous articulates, the voice of woman differs from that of man: “Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible.”1 In her introduction to Making a Spectacle, Lynda Hart suggests one reason for this omission: “As a form, the drama is more public and social than the other literary arts. The woman playwright’s voice reaches a community of spectators in a highly public place that has historically been regarded as a highly subversive, politicized environment. The theatre is the sphere most removed from domesticity, thus the woman who ventures to be heard in this space takes a greater risk than the woman poet or novelist, but it may also offer her greater potential for effecting social change.”2
Hart’s emphasis on the social impact of drama helps us understand one reason women have been marginalized in the theatre. Another reason is economic: converting a script to a dramatic production involves paying for a theatre, performers, a director, sets, lighting, and marketing. Generally, women lack the necessary financial resources. (Many male play-wrights do too, of course, but financial backers have traditionally been more willing to take the risk of backing plays written by men.)
Both these reasons—the political power of drama and the financial resources necessary to stage a production—solidify what we have discovered. As Katie Donovan notes, there are more women playwrights now than ever, but they are still ignored by mainstream theatres: “It seems that there is still a fair way to go for women playwrights, whose fiction-writing sisters have long since caught up with their male peers.”3
“Languaged people,” says a character in Lady Gregory’s The Wrens, “can turn history to their own hand.”4 Yet unless this history is understood, its mistakes will continue. Let us begin, then, by exploring drama in Ireland—mainstream drama as well as the drama on the fringe, where most women playwrights have dwelled.
Background
Unlike most Western cultures, Ireland did not have a native dramatic tradition. Douglas Hyde believed that the development of the romance was a substitute for drama and that the Ossianic poems might have been originally performed rather than merely acted, but Ireland’s rich oral tradition probably fulfilled its need for drama. And since Ireland was rural rather than urban, an indigenous drama never developed.
Drama actually began in Ireland with the coming of the Normans. When drama did arrive, it was meant for the ruling class, the Ascendancy. It is certain that the native population had little or no part in the miracle or morality plays that were staged in Dublin and traveled to other towns in medieval times. Writing of the medieval theatre in Dublin, Christopher Fitz-Simon reports, “When vernacular dialogue was introduced into Irish theatrical performances, it was in English, which the vast proportion of the population outside Dublin would have been unable to understand. This underlies the completely foreign nature of the theatre at this period.”5 During the great flowering of Elizabethan drama, the Irish were fighting for their lives outside the Pale. After the first theatre was opened in Dublin in 1637, theatre remained for nearly two centuries within the control of a resident ruling class.6
From the Ascendancy, however, “came the long line of dramatists which gave to the world Irish dramatists rather than Irish drama.”7 These prolific playwrights included William Congreve, George Farquhar, Richard Steele, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Dion Boucicault, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett—an impressive list by any standard.
Irish Literary Revival
Previous scholars have thoroughly covered the beginnings of the Irish Literary Theatre and, subsequently, the Abbey Theatre, so it will only be briefly discussed here. After the historic 1897 meeting of W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Edward Martyn, the Irish Literary Theatre was born. In Our Irish Theatre, Lady Gregory recounts their plan: “We propose to have performed in Dublin, in the spring of every year certain Celtic and Irish plays, which whatever be their degree of excellence will be written with a high ambition, and so to build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature. . . . We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, but the home of an ancient idealism.”8
The founders of this group wanted to give a dramatic voice to Ireland. As Yeats wrote in Beltaine, they would “attempt to do in Dublin something of what has been done in London and Paris. . . . [Its] writers will appeal to that limited public which gives understanding, and not to that unlimited public which gives wealth.”9 The short-lived Irish Literary Theatre (1899–1901) laid the foundation for a national theatre with its plays: Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen, Martyn’s The Heather Field and Maeve, Alice Milligan’s The Last Feast of the Fianna, George Moore and Martyn’s The Bending of the Bough, Moore and Yeats’s Diarmuid and Grania, and Douglas Hyde’s Casadh an tSugáin (The Twisting of the Rope). In all but Hyde’s play, the performers were English and the directing was poor, but many positive traits emerged. For one thing, this experiment promoted Irish themes on stage: Milligan’s play (the first “Celtic Twilight” drama) and Hyde’s (the first professionally produced Irish-language drama) opened doors previously closed. And, of course, these plays, along with Yeats’s poetic gifts and Gregory’s talents and dedication, furnished the impetus for a national theatre.
The Fay brothers, W. G. and Frank J., who had formed a company of Irish actors, also provided an impetus. In 1902, their Irish National Dramatic Society produced A. E.’s Deirdre and two plays written by Yeats and Lady Gregory: Cathleen ni Houlihan and The Pot of Broth. The Fays occasionally collaborated with the nationalist women’s organization, Inginidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin), a group that presented, on its own, such plays as Milligan’s The Harp That Once (1901) and Hyde’s An Naomh ar Iarraid (1903). In 1903, the Fays joined Yeats to establish the Irish National Theatre Society, with Yeats as president. That year saw Lady Gregory’s Twenty-Five and J. M. Synge’s first play, In the Shadow of the Glen.
Although plays by Synge, Yeats, and Gregory dominated the theatre in Dublin in the early years of the century, other fine new playwrights—James Cousins, Padraic Colum, Seumas MacManus, and Lennox Robinson, to name a few—emerged. In 1904, when Annie Horniman, an Englishwoman, presented the National Theatre Society with its own building, soon known as the Abbey Theatre, their permanence was secured. Not surprising, perhaps, is the stimulus this dramatic society gave to both professional and amateur groups. In 1902, Bulmer Hobson and Lewis Purcell (David Parkhill) founded the Ulster Literary Theatre, in 1908 the Cork Dramatic Society was born, and in 1914 the Irish Theatre appeared. Many plays also emerged from the numerous amateur groups that flourished during this period. For instance, the Kilkenny Dramatic Club produced Milligan’s The Daughters of Donagh (1904); the National Players, Miss L. McManus’s O’Donnell’s Cross (1907); the Independent Theatre Company, Eva Gore-Booth’s Unseen Kings (1912); the Countess of Roden’s Company, Mary Costello’s A Bad Quarter of an Hour (1913); the Little Theatre, Dorothy Macardle’s Asthara (1918); and Ira Allen’s Company, Sheila Walsh’s The Mother (1918). These amateur groups presented dramas by both men and women, but then, as now, most plays written by women did not appear in the mainstream theatre. Although some plays written by women were produced in major theatres—Dorothy Macardle’s Ann Kavanagh (1922), for one—generally the voices of women playwrights were not heard.
Lady Gregory was, of course, the exception. Although she was already fifty when her first play was produced, she wrote over thirty-five more plays, not counting her translations and adaptations. Aside from her prolific writing, she was a collector of folklore, director of the Abbey, and vociferous supporter of many young writers, including Sean O’Casey and Synge, whose unfinished Deirdre of the Sorrows she helped complete after his death.
Certainly John Millington Synge deserves special attention in any study of Irish drama. Like Lady Gregory, he developed his own dialect, one filled with the poetry of the earth. Like Yeats, he used a mythic basis for several plays, but Synge’s myth transcended the medieval sagas, as in the rhythmic power of Riders to the Sea. His dramatic voice was neither male nor female; the country occupied by his imagination was universal. Sean O’Casey, another great playwright to emerge during this period, has often been credited—particularly in terms of his Dublin trilogy—for advocating the causes of women and other victims of social injustice. In his plays, he certainly exhibits great sympathy for his female characters, but even Juno, O’Casey’s strongest woman character, reacts rather than acts. Her forceful words belie her powerlessness. Such a portrayal, however, may be descriptive rather than proscriptive.
Several types of plays emerged during the years of the Revival: heroic, poetic, peasant, and realistic. Each worked to break from the stereotypical buffoon of the stage Irishman, and the dramatic movement succeeded in destroying this clichéd character. From the poetic power of Yeats’s Cuchulain cycle to the sheer romp through Lady Gregory’s comedies, a wide range of plays—and characters—appeared. Although none of Synge’s successors in depicting peasant life matched his poetic language, many realistically portrayed rural Ireland; Padraic Colum, George Fitzmaurice, and Thomas C. Murray each wrote powerful peasant plays.
Alongside these plays, a nationalist drama flourished. Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan had such an impact on the audience that, years later, he wondered if it had caused the 1916 Rising, a rebellion that has been described as “a movement led by myth-possessed men who willingly perish into images.”10 Many of these “myth-possessed” men and women wrote plays. Thomas MacDonagh, executed in 1916, describes a rebellion of the future in When the Dawn Is Come (1908). Terence MacSwiney, who died on a hunger strike in 1920, shows rebels as carrying on a noble tradition that reaches back to the time of Fionn mac Cumhail in The Last Warriors of Coole (1910). Padraic Pearse, executed in 1916, demonstrates how much a single rebel can accomplish in The Singer (1915). Constance Markievicz, whose 1916 death sentence was commuted, stresses the importance of fidelity to the nationalist cause in The Invincible Mother (1925).
Although generalizations seldom work, one cannot help but notice that the voices in nationalist plays differ between the male and female dramatists. Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, as well as the plays of MacSwiney, Pearse, and MacDonagh, all point to action and fighting on a community or national level. Markievicz’s play, along with Maud Gonne MacBride’s Dawn (1904) and Lady Gregory’s The Gaol Gate (1906) and The Rising of the Moon (1907), focuses more on the personal level, on the connections between those involved. Only O’Casey bridges this gap, for he shows the personal consequences of large-scale activities.
To understand this distinction between male and female voices, one merely has to examine plays written on similar themes. Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, for instance, focuses on a Mother Ireland figure calling young men to leave their homes and families in order to follow her down the road to heroism. Conversely, MacBride’s Dawn portrays Mother Ireland as the head—and heart—of a family; although she has the same goal as Yeats’s character, she strives to meet it from within the confines of her own home. A similar variation appears in MacSwiney’s and Milligan’s plays about Fionn mac Cumhaill. MacSwiney’s play centers on Fionn as a messiah, ready to lead his people to victory or, perhaps, to death. Milligan, however, depicts Fionn, at his own hearth, as an aging warrior whose physical strength has diminished but who retains all his nobility.
During the early years of the twentieth century, women dramatists appeared—and disappeared—rapidly. In Ireland, the following plays were produced in an eleven-year span: Mary E. L. Butler’s Kittie (1902); O’Brien Butler and Nora Cheeson’s The Sea Swan (1903); Susan Varian’s Tenement Troubles (1904); Winifred M. Letts’s The Eyes of the Blind (1907); Nora Fitzpatrick and Casimir Markievicz’s Home Sweet Home (1908); Winifred Letts’s The Challenge (1909); Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Expiation and Mary Costello’s The Coming of Aideen and The Gods at Play (1910); Johanna Redmond’s Falsely True, Honor’s Choice, The Best of a Bad Bargain, and Pro Patria, Molly F. Scott’s Charity, and Jane Barlow’s A Bunch of Lavender (1911); Johanna Redmond’s Leap Year, Norah Fitzpatrick’s The Dangerous Age, and Miss M. F. Scott’s Family Rights (1912); Gertrude Robins’s The Home-Coming, S[uzanne] R. Day and G. D. Cummins’s Broken Faith, Florence Eaton’s Playing with Fire, S. R. Day’s Toilers, Mrs. Bart Kennedy’s My Lord, and Alice Maye Finny’s A Local Demon (1913).11 The questions raised by such a list are important to this study. What happened to these women? Did they stop writing plays or did they have trouble getting their other plays produced? Did they try to write about women’s experience in a male voice, thus diminishing their potency? Or did the male-dominated power structure of the theatres find women’s voices too difficult to interpret? We will probably never know. But, certainly, these minor playwrights enriched the Irish theatrical scene in the early years of the Revival.
The Status Of Irish Women
As a backdrop to the years spanned in this anthology, it is important to have at least a basic, albeit abbreviated, understanding of the sociopolitical climate that suppressed Irish women for much of the twentieth century. Each of the playwrights included herein had to go against the grain in some way in order to become seen and heard, the focal grain here being the limited rights of women in the early twentieth century through the late 1970s, when the winds of change blew with hurricane speed. Two of these plays come from the early period and the Irish Free State era, but most of them were penned after the blossoming 1970s. Here then is what shaped these playwrights’ collective mindset.
In the wake of the Victorian era, in which repressive patriarchal attitudes abounded, women remained quite fashionably uninvolved politically. Old habits die hard, and the expansion of women’s rights on this unsceptered isle was a slow if steady uphill battle.
The opening decades of the twentieth century were full of movement and creativity in Ireland. Although they rarely received as much public recognition as their male counterparts, women did make a substantial contribution to the Irish Renaissance. It was an exciting time to be a woman, but a frustrating time to be an Irish woman seeking artistic recognition. Regardless of this pervasive, quiet rumble of feminist enlightenment, it was difficult for women artists to gain admission to the inner circle of the Dublin theatre scene, and in particular that of the famed Abbey Theatre. From all appearances, Irish women of all creeds and backgrounds were making significant statements on aspects of Irish life—except, as the historian Margaret MacCurtain emphasizes, politics, from which Irish women were excluded.12
To begin with, when Lady Gregory’s The Workhouse Ward premiered in 1908, Irish women still could not vote; this did not change until ten years later, when in 1918 Irish women did gain the vote, but only those over the age of thirty. Four years later, when the Irish Free State (1922–1937)13 was established by treaty, a resurgence of spirit spread throughout Ireland. It was during this period that Teresa Deevy’s plays were performed at the Abbey Theatre.
Although in the eyes of the predominantly male Sinn Fein government the women of post-Treaty Ireland may have come a long way compared with their predecessors, they still had a long way to go in attaining even a semblance of equal rights with their male counterparts. One need only look at the legislative patterns of the day to realize that, as the historian Margaret Ward points out, President Eamon de Valera, and hence a good portion of Ireland, believed adamantly that “a woman’s place was in the home.”14 MacCurtain reflects on how the majority of Irish women view the two decades after the 1921 Treaty as crucial to their experience of being female in Ireland: “Self-determination was to come tardily, but it was to come surprisingly to the older woman as well as to the young, to the widow as well as to the married woman, to the woman in paid employment as well as to the woman working at home. And the debate was to be about equality of opportunity.”15 The prolific novelist and occasional dramatist Maeve Binchy adds that “life for women since 1922 should have been joyful and optimistic, but too often it was blighted by the fear of raising a head too high over a parapet: a woman who called attention to herself was a woman who would not win.”16
One might connect the Irish woman’s lack of political power to her very limited opportunities in education. This in turn perpetuated her poor self-image and encouraged her to consider little other than getting married and bearing generally a large number of children. Lack of education of course limited her employment opportunities, which in turn limited any monetary earning power she might have. The obvious absence of the Irish woman’s voice in education, employment, marital rights, and family planning completes the circle and brings the focus back to her overall lack of political power.
In 1932 the Irish government proposed to legally bar the recruitment of married women to the civil service (many of whom were national teachers) or their retention after marriage. Originally imposed in public service, the restriction soon spread throughout private companies. This most inexcusable practice forced Irish women to resign from work upon marriage. The Irish state essentially offered women a choice between work and marriage. Far removed from the sexist line of reasoning prevalent in some modern societies, a free-thinking Irish woman would not view marriage as a vehicle whereby she would no longer have to work, but rather as a barrier to continuing work or even to seeking employment. The marriage bar ensured that the majority of working women were young, and it deprived the Irish female image of the important elements of authority and maturity. Employers tended to view women as poor investments, not good long-term prospects, and their promotional policies regarding women were deplorable. The bar was also extremely detrimental to single women, as it virtually destroyed their promotional prospects. There was also a general lack of career orientation in Irish women. Many women did not seriously consider a career, tending instead to view employment as a stop-gap between school and marriage. Parents, peer groups, and the educational system strongly reinforced this orientation. The marriage bar was not strongly challenged until 1972, with the publication of the Report of the Commission on the Status of Women.17 The marriage bar was removed from the civil service on July 31, 1973, and was not officially declared illegal until the Employment Equality Act of 1977.18
Post-Treaty Irish women, therefore, retreated into a secondary role defined within the framework of marriage and family life: women were assigned a home-based, full-time role as housewives, whose talents and energies were devoted to looking after husband and children.19
The psychologist Patricia Redlich points out that in the 1937 constitution, the priorities given to home-oriented duties is very much in line with the Church’s view that a woman’s role in life is fulfilled as a mother and a homemaker.20 The Church’s dominant influence can be seen here in this encouragement and conditioning to conform to a very rigid role behavior.
Although several women made rather feeble attempts to debate the issues presented in the 1937 constitution, most of the issues concerning all of the above legislation were not challenged by feminist voices until the 1950s, and they were soft voices at that. Maurice Manning claims that it was not until 1969 with the arrival of Mary Robinson in the Senate that a woman of parliamentary stature appeared.21
Since those early decades, much has been challenged and much has been changed. But the fact remains that in the period of the 1920s and 1930s, Irish women were characterized by reticence, abstinence, and diffidence as far as parliamentary matters were concerned, and by a sense of knowing their place in a male-dominated political world.22 Regardless of changes made in the field of education for women in Ireland, there still existed in the 1970s Irish educational system the reinforcement of traditional role conditioning whereby the woman is home centered and the man is employment centered. Until this time, the Irish state’s laws and social provisions remained repressive of liberty in the two areas of sex and work. The fact that contraception was outlawed, that working women accepted ridiculously low wages, and that married women were taxed at a higher rate than men, all had the result that in these two areas, women paid a higher price for less.23
In reference to the 1972 Report of the Commission on the Status of Women, then Senator Mary Robinson observed, “By the time the average girl leaves school she sees her future life in terms of a relatively short period of gainful employment followed by marriage and responsibility for looking after the home and caring for children.”24
The Report of the Commission on the Status of Women was the first official documentation of the position of women in Ireland. It raised many issues that were profound and complex, difficult and embarrassing, highlighting women’s status in the economic, legal, social, educational, and political spheres in Ireland. It also exposed injustices and inequities experienced by women across the whole range of societal life. McCarthy concludes, “It emerged that all significant areas of living were permeated by practices and attitudes that reflect negative views and perceptions of women.”25
In spite of progressive changes brought about over several decades, therefore, traditional demands were still made on the Irish woman and the traditional role assigned to her remained: she was to serve and maintain the needs of other members of the family and ensure that they were free to carry out their own tasks. As a result, Irish women were most often resigned to accepting unhappy conditions and unhappy relationships. Over the years, they adopted the philosophy that for the sake of the family they would put up with anything.
This complacency has changed with lightning speed, of course, in recent decades in Ireland, although owing to the Catholic stronghold, it was still impossible to obtain a divorce until 1995 with the passing of the Divorce Referendum, which finally lifted the ban on divorce in Ireland.
In contrasting the “different country” in which Maeve Binchy grew up in the 1940s and 1950s with Ireland today, the author reflects on how women’s rights have evolved, making “us Irish women realise what a long and triumphant journey we have taken.” In her long essay in the Irish Times, Binchy recalls how none of her friends’ mothers worked, and that a middle-class mother working outside the home was “as unthinkable as a home on Mars.” She also points out that young women were told in their homes, at school, in magazines, and in sermons that they should be “quiet and docile and not to appear too bright or questioning.” Later in the essay, Binchy speaks of the “hurricane of change” that has “blown through Ireland,” and how she has “stood and watched it blow, taking with it so much of the old, the safe, the sure, and the seriously hypocritical.” It is with a real sense of admiration that she cites the changes in Ireland: divorce, civil marriage, a weakening adherence to the Roman Catholic Church, and the acknowledgement and affirmation of second marriages. She reflects that although discrimination against women is now illegal in Ireland, which might be taken for granted in other countries, this was “a very big deal when you consider how recently these Irish women suffered from such an inferiority complex that even the thought of sueing under the anti-discrimination or sexual harassment laws of the 1980s was tantamount to ritual public suicide.”26
Since half of Ireland’s population had been suppressed by the Church and government for so long, is it any wonder it has taken these women decades to find their voices in the language that Le Marquand Hartigan asserts we are all still learning?
After the Revival
During the Irish Literary Revival, some of the finest plays ever written in the English language appeared. Yet it was only a beginning. Although the Revival officially ended when O’Casey left the country in 1926, many playwrights who began during that period continued producing fine work. Several of Yeats’s most acclaimed plays came out in the 1930s—The Words upon the Window-Pane (1934), Purgatory (1939), and the final play of his Cuchulain cycle, The Death of Cuchulain (1939, produced in 1945). Lennox Robinson and T. C. Murray continued their creative dramas with such works as Drama at Inish (1933) and Bird’s Nest (1948) for Robinson and Michaelmas Eve (1932) for Murray.
Newer dramatists emerged at this time. Kate O’Brien achieved success with Distinguished Villa (1926), but soon turned from the stage to novel writing. In 1931, Teresa Deevy and Paul Vincent Carroll jointly won an Abbey play competition. Several of Deevy’s plays, including The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935) and Katie Roche (1936), were produced at the Abbey in the 1930s. Katie Roche enjoyed a successful revival at the Abbey in 1994. Many of her later plays, though, were written for the radio. One cannot help but wonder if the male-dominated power structure forced these women into leaving the stage. Carroll, however, continued writing for the stage with such renowned works as Shadow and Substance (1937), The White Steed (1939), and The Devil Came from Dublin (1955). Christine Longford achieved some success in 1933 with Mr. Jiggins of Jigginstown, as did Mary Manning with Youth’s the Season (1931) and Storm over Wicklow (1933), but Anne Daly’s Leave It to the Doctor (1959) was severely criticized. Denis Johnston began his prolific playwriting career with many productions at the Abbey and Gate theatres; his most notable plays include The Old Lady Says “No!” (1928), Dreaming Dust (1940), and The Scythe and the Sunset (1958). And Brendan Behan’s short but gifted playwriting career produced such works as The Quare Fellow (1954) and The Hostage (1958). Other new playwrights to appear during these years were Michael J. Molloy (The King of Friday’s Men, 1948; The Paddy Pedlar, 1953), Bryan MacMahon (Song of the Anvil, 1960; The Honey Spike, 1967), and John B. Keane (Sive, 1959; The Field, 1965).
Some writers known mainly in other genres also succeeded with their dramas. Frank O’Connor, for instance, took a brief sojourn from fiction to collaborate with Hugh Hunt on The Invincibles and In the Train (1937). The sensitive depiction of life in the Dublin tenements in Maura Laverty’s Liffey Lane (1947) is similar in voice, if not in form, to her fiction. Laverty and Mary Manning had three plays each produced at the Gate Theatre. The novelist Edna O’Brien began writing stage plays, which include A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers (1963), A Pagan Place (1972), and Virginia (1981). And the novelist M. J. Farrell (Molly Keane) wrote several plays with John Perry, including Spring Meeting (1938), Treasure Hunt (1949), and Dazzling Prospect (1961). Perry collaborated with Elizabeth Bowen in writing her play Castle Anna (1948) several years after he transposed her short story “Oh, Madam” into a stage monologue. And Bowen wrote a historical pageant for Kinsale (1965) and a nativity play that was produced in the 1960s at Limerick Cathedral and in 1970 at the Protestant cathedral in Derry.
Contemporary Theatre (1970–1990)
Theatre in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s was as exciting as it had ever been. The canon of male playwrights is instantly recognizable. Brian Friel, the most renowned playwright at this time, achieved international acclaim with such plays as his earlier Philadelphia, Here I Come (1964), Translations (1980), and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). Other noted male playwrights included Hugh Leonard (Da, 1972; A Life, 1979), Frank McGuinness (Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme, 1985), Thomas Kilroy (Talbot’s Box, 1977), and Thomas Murphy (The Gigli Concert, 1983). Recent decades in Irish theatre gave rise to several notable dramatists: Declan Hughes (Love and a Bottle, 1995), Gary Mitchell (Tearing the Loom, 1998; The Force of Change, 2000), Conor McPherson (The Weir, 1997; Shining City, 2003; The Night Alive, 2013), and Martin McDonagh (The Cripple of Inishmaan, 1996; The Pillowman, 2003; A Behanding in Spokane, 2010), to name four. Emerging from the undercurrent, however, were the dramatic voices of Irish women.
In his essay “Recent Irish Drama,” Christopher Murray appended a list of new Irish plays staged in Ireland from May 1979 through May 1981. Of the sixty-one playwrights included, only six were women.27 But such trends seemed to be changing, for Irish drama in these decades had a sudden plethora of women playwrights. In 1982, the Irish Times and Dublin Theatre Festival co-sponsored a competition for a play by a woman. After examining the almost two hundred entries, the judges concluded that many were better than plays by male authors who had been produced in recent years. Mary Halpin’s Semi-Private received the award for the best play; Christina Reid’s Tea in a China Cup was judged a close second. Both plays speak strongly about women’s issues in women’s voices. Other finalists in the competition were Boat People by Alice O’Donoghue, Cradlesong by Rita E. Kelly, No Chips for Johnny by Una Lynch-Caffrey, Facade by Ann O’Musoy, Country Banking by Nesta Tuomey, and Supermarket by Barbara Walsh.
Ever since this competition, the door to literary and dramatic success seems to have been sprung open for Irish women. The changing status of women in Ireland is reflected in the subject matter of the plays. There are now plays that examine women’s place in an ever-changing society, their complicated lives as women, and the tension caused by choices between hearth and career.
Women playwrights today are examining their own status in society as well as the status of other powerless groups. Sheila Flitton’s For Better or for Worse and Margaret Neylon’s Home from Home focus on the problems faced by battered wives, Dolores Walshe’s The Sins in Sally Gardens shows family violence in more general terms, Miriam Gallagher’s Dusty Bluebells treats women in prison, Geraldine Aron’s The Stanley Parkers describes the impact of AIDS on a middle-aged homosexual couple, Walshe’s In the Talking Dark treats the racial tensions in South Africa, Big Telly (an all-women theatre company in Northern Ireland) describes bag ladies in Onions Make You Cry, and Christina Reid’s Joyriders shows the devastating effects of poverty. Anne Le Marquand Hartigan’s I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside and Jennifer Johnston’s The Porch address the problems of the elderly, as does Angela Clarke’s All My Worldly Goods, while Marie Jones’s The Hamster Wheel, Reid’s Tea in a China Cup, and Ena May’s She’s Your Mother, Too, You Know concentrate more on caregivers for the elderly and infirm. Set in a hospital gynecological ward, Mary Halpin’s Semi-Private focuses on the biological as well as the societal problems unique to women, and Miriam Gallagher’s Labels shows problems within the male-dominated medical profession. Geraldine Aron’s The Donahue Sisters is a chilling account of what happens when the powerless take power.
Writers from Northern Ireland often show the impact of the current political unrest. Reid’s Did You Hear the One About the Irishman . . . ? uses black humor to underline the devastation, while Jones’s Somewhere over the Balcony shows how humor can be a tool for survival; both plays are nonsectarian. Anne Devlin’s Ourselves Alone presents female bonding as an alternative to male violence in Northern Ireland, and Dolores Walshe’s The Stranded Hours Between suggests a similar alternative for South Africa. Jennifer Johnston’s Christine and Mustn’t Forget High Noon portray a couple destroyed by the turmoil in the North.
Women writing in all parts of the country focus on problems of families or couples failing to communicate: Ena May’s Out of the Beehive, Anne Le Marquand Hartigan’s Strings, Carolyn Swift’s The Civilised Way of Doing Things, Harriet O’Carroll’s The Image of Her Mother, and Dolores Walshe’s A Country in Our Heads.
During this time period, women were also dramatizing actual events. Anne Le Marquand Hartigan’s La Corbière sympathetically describes a group of prostitutes who drowned; Miriam Gallagher’s The Ring of Mount de Balison focuses on eight hundred years of Ranelagh history; Charabanc’s Lay up Your Ends describes the 1911 strike in the Belfast linen mills; and Maeve Binchy’s Deeply Regretted By shows the impact of bigamy on the “second” family. In Lady G, Carolyn Swift presents the many facets of Lady Gregory as a woman rather than just as a supporter of Yeats, Synge, and O’Casey. Another biographical play, Maureen Charlton’s Berlioz and the Girl from Ennis, describes the stormy relationship between the composer Berlioz and Harriet Smithson, his Irish wife.
Women playwrights are dramatizing mythic events as well. In Women in Arms, Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy portrays such powerful mythic figures as Maeve and Deirdre. Mary Halpin’s Shady Ladies juxtaposes mythic and historic women with an actress of today, and Miriam Gallagher focuses on legend in The Sealwoman and the Fisher: A Play for Dancers.
Women are using a variety of techniques to illustrate their themes. Ullaloo, one of Marina Carr’s earliest plays, is an almost-absurdist drama somewhat reminiscent of Beckett, yet innovative rather than derivative; its surrealistic approach is not unlike that of Miriam Gallagher’s Omelettes. Burke-Kennedy uses the story-theatre technique in Women in Arms, and many use the monologue format to voice their concerns. Johnston’s Christine and Mustn’t Forget High Noon, for instance, are two extended monologues.
One possible reason for the upsurge in women writing plays—and in women’s plays being produced—can be found in the vibrant new theatre groups that have arisen in Ireland; many of these groups were founded (or co-founded) by women who yearned to have their voices heard in the theatre: Lynne Parker, Rough Magic; Garry Hynes, Druid; Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, Storytellers’ Theatre Company and, with Deirdre O’Connell, Focus; Jill Holmes and Zoe Seaton, Big Telly; Brenda Winter, Replay; Emelie Fitzgibbon, Graffiti; and Brenda Winter, Marie Jones, Eleanor Methven, and Carol Moore (also known as Carol Scanlan), Charabanc.
Charabanc contributed drama that is particularly energetic and exciting. Founded by five actresses in 1983 because of their frustration over the lack of roles for women, the company achieved remarkable success in translating political struggles, past and present, to the stage, where their gift for satire and black comedy shone.28 Founding member Carol Moore once reflected that Charabanc’s working process completely tossed aside both dominating male prerogatives and the traditional power structure of most theatres. Since its first production, Lay up Your Ends, through Oul’ Delf and False Teeth, Now You’re Talkin’, Gold in the Streets, The Girls in the Big Picture, Somewhere over the Balcony, Weddin’s, Wee’ins and Wakes, and The Hamster Wheel, it concentrated on problems that affect Catholics and Protestants alike—violence, poverty, discrimination, division, and women’s issues. The Blind Fiddler of Glenadauch, however, differs somewhat with its focus on the Catholic community’s loss of an identifiable cultural tradition. Charabanc’s triumphant tours in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland, Russia, Lithuania, and the United States brought their talents, perspectives, and issues before the world. The troupe flourished until it disbanded in 1995. Their plays brought women’s voices to the fore.
Contemporary Theatre: 1991–Present
The 1990s saw numerous talented dramatists reach the forefront of Irish theatre. Eileen Kearney recalls a conversation in the mid-1980s with Christopher Fitz-Simon, former literary head of the Abbey Theatre. Marina Carr was just starting to be known. He said, “I guarantee we will all hear more of this young woman. You will hear of her again.” And, of course, we have. Carr, along with Marie Jones, are two shining stars of present-day Irish theatre. Both have won wide acclaim and awards for their work. Carr is one of the few women to have an ongoing relationship with the Abbey. Since the late 1980s her work has been produced there. Ullaloo (1991), The Mai (1994), Portia Coughlan (1996), By the Bog of Cats (1998), and On Raftery’s Hill (2000) have been produced in Dublin and then found their way to other venues such as the Royal Court Theatre,29 which saw the London premiere of On Raftery’s Hill in the summer of 2000. In the fall of 2001, Carr’s reworking of the Medea myth, By the Bog of Cats, had its American premiere at the San Jose Repertory Theatre in California, with Holly Hunter in the leading role. Hunter reprised this role in London’s West End in 2004 and 2005. Productions of The Mai have occurred all over the United States. Carr also wrote Meat and Salt (2003), a play for young audiences that was produced at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre. Ariel, a reworking of Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis, dates from 2002, and Woman and Scarecrow premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2006.
Marie Jones left Charabanc in the early 1990s and worked for a time with the Belfast-based DubbelJoint Theatre Company. Charabanc disbanded in 1995, having been the most successful touring company in the history of Ireland. Jones’s post-Charabanc plays include a one-man show, A Night in November (1994), that has played internationally, Ruby (2000), Weddin’s, Wee’ins, and Wakes (1989, 2001),30 Women on the Verge of HRT (1995), and her wildly successful Stones in His Pockets (1996).31 First produced at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in 1999 under the direction of Ian McElhinney, it went on to London’s West End and later to Broadway in 2001, garnering many awards along the way: the Laurence Olivier Award for best comedy, the Irish Times/ESB Award for best play, a special judges’ award from the Belfast Arts Awards, the John Hewitt Award, and three nominations for Broadway’s 2001 Tony Awards.
Although the names of Marina Carr and Marie Jones might be the most recognizable in the litany of Irish women playwrights today, these two women are not alone. Anne Devlin continues to write and her plays continue to hold the stage. In 1994, After Easter was produced at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon by the Royal Shakespeare Company and later transferred to the Barbican in London in 1995. Belfast’s Lyric Theatre also produced the play, and, along with Devlin’s still popular Ourselves Alone (1985), it has had several productions in the United States.
Christina Reid’s plays were published as a collection by Methuen in 1997 under the title Christina Reid, Plays I. The collection includes The Belle of the Belfast City (1989) and Clowns (1996), a sequel to Joyriders (1986). In 2000 the National Theatre in London produced King of the Castle, which is a play for young people and was commissioned by British Telecom. Theatre-in-Education (TIE) groups all over the United Kingdom participated in this project and two groups brought productions of the play to the National.
In the 1990s the award-winning Rough Magic Theatre Company conducted a playwriting competition for women writers, out of which came three successful productions: Gina Moxley’s Danti-Dan (1995), Pom Boyd’s Down onto Blue (1994), and the poet Paula Meehan’s MRS. Sweeney (1997). Danti-Dan, which deals with the cruelty of adolescent children, transferred to London’s Hampstead Theatre after its initial Dublin production. Both Boyd and Moxley have continued to write for the theatre. After her first play MRS. Sweeney, Meehan continued to work in the theatrical medium and wrote Cell (1999), which she based on her work with prisoners. Boyd penned Boomtown in 1999, Moxley’s Tea Set appeared in 2000, and in 2003 the Abbey produced Meehan’s The Wolf of Winter. In 1999, Rough Magic published Rough Magic: First Plays, which was the first Irish drama anthology of its size to have an equal number of plays by Irish men and women (three each),32 including plays by Boyd, Moxley, and Meehan. Gemma O’Connor’s one-woman show SigNora Joyce (1991), which examines the life of Nora Barnacle Joyce, played in London. In 2002 Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy’s Women in Arms was revived in Ireland. Emma Donoghue, a scholar, novelist, and playwright, received praise for I Know My Own Heart (1993) and Ladies and Gentlemen (1996), both of which are based on historical records, reclaiming often-suppressed lesbian histories. She adapted her own volume Kissing the Witch for the stage, and San Francisco’s Magic Theatre produced it in 2000.
In 1992 in Galway, the playwright, poet, and painter Patricia Burke Brogan saw the first production of her play Eclipsed, which examines the scandal of the Magdalene Laundries. It later won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival. Brogan’s next play, Stained Glass at Samhain, opened in Galway at the Town Hall Theatre in 2002, as did her newest play, Requiem of Love, in 2005.
Michelle Read’s Romantic Friction (1997) opened in Dublin, won a Fringe First in 1998, and later was featured in the Irish Theatre Festival at the Actor’s Centre in London in the summer of 1999. Her plays Romantic Friction, The Lost Letters of a Victorian Lady (1996), and The Other Side (2003) all reflect the zaniness of Read’s background as a stand-up comedienne.
Jennifer Johnston’s Desert Lullaby was produced by the Lyric Theatre in 1996, followed by a subsequent production in New York. Her monologue Twinkletoes was produced in Dublin at Bewleys in 1993 with the actress Carol Moore, a founding member of Charabanc, in the role of Karen. The production was directed by Caroline Fitzgerald.
Like Dolores Walshe, Elizabeth Kuti has expanded the boundaries of what an Irish playwright writes. Born of a Hungarian father and a British mother, Kuti studied at Dublin’s Trinity University, where she composed the last two acts of Frances Sheridan’s unfinished play A Trip to Bath (1765), now retitled The Whisperers (1999).33 Her play Treehouses (2000) received Honorable Mention for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.34
In the spring of 2000, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, held an Irish play festival and invited Rough Magic’s production of Stewart Parker’s Pentecost. Rough Magic’s founding member Lynne Parker directed her uncle’s play in a highly acclaimed production that toured in Dublin as well as in London’s Donmar Warehouse, a major fringe venue.
Also invited to the Kennedy Center was Galway’s Druid Theatre production of Marina Carr’s On Raftery’s Hill. This co-production of the Druid Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre was directed by Garry Hynes, the founding member and artistic director of the Druid Theatre, who later served as artistic director of the Abbey. Although she had written two plays years earlier, The Pursuit of Pleasure (1977) and Island Protected by a Bridge of Glass (1980), Hynes, like Lynne Parker, is most noted for her directing. In 1998 Hynes became the first woman in history to win the Tony Award for best director for her Broadway production of Martin McDonough’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
What is most amazing about the Kennedy Center event is the convergence of energy and talent, showcasing some of Ireland’s most accomplished women in theatre. The actual festival highlighted the work of Ireland’s two most famous directors, Parker and Hynes. Acting in Parker’s Pentecost were Eleanor Methven and Carol Moore, two of the founding members of Charabanc, who thereby continued the troupe’s legacy. At this same time, another founding member, Marie Jones, was enjoying the early success of her play Stones in His Pocket, which was to win a myriad of awards. Brenda Winter also continued her work with Replay Theatre. Thus, when the scholar and Irish theatre historian Claudia Harris wrote in 1997 that “Charabanc changed the face of Irish Theatre,”35 her words were prophetic.
In 2000 the Irish Times Theatre Award for best production went to Convictions, a collection of short plays addressing issues about the Crumlin Road Prison. Nicola McCartney and Marie Jones were two of the seven dramatists commissioned to write these dramatic works. This award-winning multiauthored theatre event was staged in the Crumlin Road Courthouse in Belfast. Each play was site specific and each dramatist was given a specific room in the prison in which to base her or his play.
At the time of this writing, the sheer volume of Irish women’s innovative theatrical voices is energizing. Emma Donoghue and Elizabeth Kuti continue to contribute new plays to the constantly expanding canon. In addition to some of the better-known dramatists discussed, there are a number of other women playwrights on the cutting edge of current Irish drama: Nicola McCartney, The Millies (2002) and All Legendary Obstacles (2003), produced by the Abbey Theatre; Hilary Fannin, Mackerel Sky (1997), Sleeping Around (2002, in collaboration with Abi Morgan, Mark Ravenhill, and Stephen Greenhor), and Doldrum Bay (2003); Emelie FitzGibbon, Meal Ticket (1989) and The Changeling (1998), both Theatre for Young Audiences vehicles; Rita Ann Higgins, Face Licker Come Home (1991) and Down All the Roundabouts (or No-one is Entitled to a View)(1999); Siofra Campbell, Couch (2000); Claire Dowling, The Marlboro Man (1994); Ioanna Anderson, Words of Advice for Young People (2004); Oonagh Kearney, Calling Hilary (1998) and Urban Angels (2001); Deirdre Kinahan, Be Carna: Women of the Flesh (1999), Attaboy, Mr. Synge! (2002), Rum and Raisin (with Alice Barry, 2003), and These Halcyon Days (2112); Alice Barry, Pam Ella [one-act] (2002) and Rum and Raisin (with Deirdre Kinahan, 2003); Lisa McGee, Girls and Dolls (2007); and Carmel Winters, B for Baby (2011).
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of exciting and award-winning women dramatists have emerged, including Lucy Caldwell, Morna Regan, Ursula Rani Sarma, and Abbie Spallen. Belfast native Lucy Caldwell won the 2006 George Devine Award and the 2007 Susan Smith Blackburn Award for Leaves, which had productions at both the Druid Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre. Abbie Spallen also hails from Belfast and has won wide praise for Pumpgirl (2006), which has had multiple productions. Morna Regan’s Midden (2001) earned her the European Playwright Award. Ursula Rani Sarma, who is of Irish-Indian descent, has penned several plays, including Blue (2000), Gift (2001), The Spider Man (2006), and The Magic Tree (2008).
Every day we witness the emergence of young, dynamic Irish women playwrights. One would hope that these young dramatists are having an easier time being produced and published than their predecessors. A brief excursion into the Abbey Theatre archives reveals how few women playwrights have been produced there over the last century. Sadly, of the exceedingly few plays by women the Abbey has chosen to produce, the majority of these were staged in its smaller venue, the Peacock, rather than on its Main Stage. Even the Druid, under the direction of the Tony Award-winning Garry Hynes, has a lamentable record supporting women play-wrights, with the exception of Marina Carr. To cope with the situation, women have formed companies of their own, such as Charabanc, Replay, Storytellers, Gallow Glass, and others. The women of Charabanc led the way in finding women to direct their productions and their influence is still being felt. It is especially important to acknowledge what Lynne Parker and the Rough Magic Theatre Company have accomplished in celebrating drama written by women. From Gina Moxley and Pam Boyd to Paula Meehan, Elizabeth Kuti, and Morna Regan, Parker and Rough Magic have championed women playwrights. Additionally, Parker has encouraged other women directors to produce new productions of plays first championed by Rough Magic.
Women’s Voices
In discussing the place of Irish women in playwriting in 2008, Ursula Rani Sarma reflects: “I’m not sure what the place for female playwrights is in Irish theatre at all. People ask ‘where are the women playwrights?’ But they are there—there are so many of them, I mean, I have a play under commission for the first Irish Theatre Festival taking place in New York later this year, and three out of the five writers commissioned are women. There are women writing, loads of them. They are just not being programmed. But, you know, there’s no point in complaining. As an active member of the theatre community, I should challenge that, and maybe I will. I’m certainly interested in staging Irish female writers’ work with my own company, Djinn. I mean, I’m not a radical feminist by any means, but I do think the balance should be redressed.”36
It is a truism in the theatre that it can be relatively easy to find a venue for the premiere of a new drama, but as many dramatists agree, the trick is to find a second and third production of a new play. Some women dramatists have found champions for their work, and those include Marina Carr and Marie Jones. Others are still involved in the struggle. They have strong plays but are still searching for those elusive second, third, even seventh and eighth productions of their plays. As Sarma so aptly points out, “they are there—there are so many of them.”
The plays in this volume are representative of the fine dramatic writing by Irish women that exists, and they represent a cross section of that writing. We have selected the plays in the hope that they will not only be read and embraced but will also find new productions.
What the American dramatist Sarah Schulman says of theatre in New York is also applicable to theatre in Ireland. Jonathan Mandell writes in his interview of the playwright, “Ms. Schulman believes that the worst consequence of theater-as-marketing is that there are plenty of good, vibrant plays with authentic characters written by playwrights who are not in the mainstream but are being kept out by the commercial theater establishment. . . . Schulman elaborates, ‘In New York City, you can see a bad play by a white man every night of the week. . . . Why are there so few plays by anybody else? It is a profoundly discriminatory system.’”37
As Cixous so astutely expressed, women see and experience the world differently than men do, so they write about it differently. The plays anthologized here illustrate the views of women in their own voices, voices that have been silenced by being marginalized. These playwrights have given us works that stretch our imaginations, cover a myriad of themes, and challenge the stereotype of what it means to be Irish.
It has been said that the innovative drama that developed during the Literary Revival was a result of Ireland’s lack of a native dramatic tradition. So Yeats, Synge, and the other playwrights, freed from the past, could build their own tradition. Women playwrights, in Ireland and elsewhere, have had few dramatic models for expressing their voices in the past; thus, they too were free to build their own tradition, a tradition crafted through the experiences of women. If Lady Gregory opened the door, Teresa Deevy helped pave the way thereafter, inspiring other Irish women to express themselves through dramatic writing.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf muses that “masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”38 As women’s voices continue to spread throughout the theatrical world, the masterpieces will arise. Anne Le Marquand Hartigan reminds us, “We are learning our language. We have begun to speak.” This language, these voices, will continue to speak, telling their stories, finding their voices in a medium that is most rightfully their own, enriching and expanding theatre everywhere. Not only do these women belong to Ireland, but they also belong to the world.
May 2014
Eileen Kearney, University of Colorado Denver
Charlotte Headrick, Oregon State University, Corvallis
Kathleen Quinn, Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Notes
1. Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” in New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 249.
2. Lynda Hart, ed., Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 2.
3. Katie Donovan, “A Plethora of Women Playwrights,” Irish Times, September 18, 1989, 9.
4. Lady Augusta Gregory, The Wrens, in The Image and Other Plays (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), 230.
5. Christopher Fitz-Simon, The Irish Theatre (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983), 10.
6. Michael O hAodha, Theatre in Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), xii.
7. Andrew E. Malone, The Irish Drama (New York: Scribner’s, 1929), 13.
8. Lady Augusta Gregory, Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography (New York: Putnam’s, 1913), 8–9.
9. W. B. Yeats, “Plans and Methods,” Beltaine: The Organ of the Irish Literary Theatre, no. 1 (May 1899): 6–7.
10. William Irwin Thompson, The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916 (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1972), vi.
11. This list is incomplete. It omits plays previously mentioned, plays for which no record has been found, and plays by Lady Gregory and Alice Milligan.
12. Margaret MacCurtain, “Women, the Vote, and Revolution,” in Women in Irish Society: The Historical Dimension, ed. Margaret MacCurtain and Donncha O Corrain (Dublin: Arlen, 1978), 47.
13. The Irish Free State came to an end in 1937, when the citizens voted by referendum to replace the 1922 constitution. It was succeeded by the entirely sovereign modern state of Ireland.
14. Margaret Ward, “Marginality and Militancy: Cuman na mBan, 1914–1936,” in Ireland: Divided Nation, Divided Class, ed. Austen Morgan and Bob Purdie (London: Ink Links, 1980), 102.
15. Margaret MacCurtain, “The Historical Image,” in Irish Women: Image and Achievement, ed. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain (Dublin: Arlen, 1985), 17.
16. Maeve Binchy, “Gone with the Wind of Change,” Irish Times, September 26, 1998.
17. Mary E. Daly, “Women, Work, and Trade Unionism,” in MacCurtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 77.
18. Eunice McCarthy, “Women and Work in Ireland: The Present, and Preparing for the Future,” in MacCurtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 104–5.
19. Margaret MacCurtain, “Women, the Vote, and Revolution,” in MacCurtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 49.
20. Patricia Redlich, “Women and the Family,” in MacCurtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 86.
21. Maurice Manning, “Women in Irish National and Local Politics 1922–77,” in Mac-Curtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 96.
22. Ibid.
23. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, “Introduction,” in Ni Chuilleanain, Irish Women, 6.
24. Mary Robinson, “Women and the New Irish State,” in MacCurtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 58.
25. Eunice McCarthy, “Women and Work in Ireland: The Present, and Preparing for the Future,” in MacCurtain and O Corrain, Women in Irish Society, 103.
26. Binchy, “Gone with the Wind of Change.”
27. Christopher Murray, “Recent Irish Drama,” in Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature, ed. Heinz Kosok (Bonn: Herbert Grundmann, 1982), 439–46.
28. Eileen Kearney, “Current Women’s Voices in the Irish Theatre: New Dramatic Visions,” Contemporary Irish Drama Special Issue, Colby Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1991): 230.
29. It should be noted that London’s Royal Court Theatre has had an ongoing commitment to recent Irish theatre; witness the plays of Conor McPherson and Dolores Walshe.
30. Marie Jones developed with Charabanc the original one-act of this play in 1989. Jones later developed it into a full-length play of the same title in 2001, which played at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Charabanc founding members Carol Moore and Eleanor Methven were also in the 2001 production.
31. An early version of Stones in His Pockets was produced in 1996 by the DubbelJoint Theatre Company and directed by Pam Brighton at the Amharclann na Carraige/Theatre on the Rock.
32. Frank McGuinness edited The Dazzling Dark in 1996, published by Faber and Faber, which included plays by two men (Jimmy Murphy and Tom MacIntyre) and two women (Gina Moxley and Marina Carr).
33. Frances Sheridan was the mother of famed Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the “grandmother” of all Irish women playwrights.
34. This prize acknowledges outstanding women dramatists writing for the English-speaking theatre. Finalists have included Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, Jennifer Johnston, Nicola McCartney, Edna O’Brien, and Christina Reid. Anne Devlin won in 1985–1986 for Ourselves Alone, as did Marina Carr in 1996–1997 for Portia Coughlan.
35. Claudia Harris, “Notes on the Production,” American premiere of Lay up Your Ends, directed by Charlotte J. Headrick, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, April 3–5, 10–12, 1997.
36. Sara Keating, “Back to Her Roots via ‘The Magic Tree,’” Irish Times, July 1, 2008.
37. Jonathan Mandell, “When She Wrote, the Dross of Her Life Became Gold,” New York Times, January 20, 2002, Arts and Leisure section, 3.
38. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1981), 65.