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Between the City and the Village: Liminal Spaces and Ambivalent Identities in Contemporary Irish Theatre

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Abstract

The dialogue between the urban and the rural in contemporary Irish drama remains persistent and relevant, ranging in scope from Michael Sheridan’s assertion that “the universal truths about people can oftentimes be more clearly expressed in the claustrophobia of the provincial setting”, to Declan Hughes’s statement that rural-based plays in contemporary Irish drama are “based on an Ireland that hasn’t existed for years”. Issues of national and cultural identity are intrinsic to this debate, and the questions asked by it challenge perceptions and prejudices on all sides.

This chapter explores, highlights and interrogates this dialogue between the rural and the urban in contemporary Irish theatre, examining the dramatic representation of opposing, but ultimately interlinked, environments in contemporary Irish theatre.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600–1972 (London: Penguin, 1988), 181.

  2. 2.

    Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3–4.

  3. 3.

    Kathryn J. Kirkpatrick in Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, ix.

  4. 4.

    Jacqueline Genet, ed., Rural Ireland, Real Ireland? (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1996), 13.

  5. 5.

    Victor Merriman, Because We Are Poor: Irish Theatre in the 1990s (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2011), 201.

  6. 6.

    Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1996), 183.

  7. 7.

    Genet, Rural Ireland, Real Ireland?, 15.

  8. 8.

    Michael Sheridan, “John B. tills a fertile field”, The Irish Press, 24 February 1987, 9.

  9. 9.

    Conor McPherson, The Weir (London: Nick Hern Books, 1997), 4.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 4.

  11. 11.

    Andrew Hazucha, “The Shannon Scheme, Rural Electrification, and Veiled History in Conor McPherson’s The Weir”, New Hibernia Review 17, Number 1, (Spring 2013): 75.

  12. 12.

    McPherson , The Weir, 3.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 18.

  14. 14.

    Genet, Rural Ireland, Real Ireland?, 15.

  15. 15.

    McPherson , The Weir, 50.

  16. 16.

    Conor McPherson quoted in Hazucha, “The Shannon Scheme, Rural Electrification, and Veiled History in Conor McPherson’s The Weir”, 70.

  17. 17.

    Nicholas Grene, “Ireland in Two Minds: Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson”, The Yearbook of English Studies 35, (2005): 308.

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    Marie Jones, Two Plays: Stones In His Pockets, A Night In November (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000), 8.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 28.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 13.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 15.

  23. 23.

    Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), 18.

  24. 24.

    Patrick Lonergan, Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 10.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 11.

  27. 27.

    Jones, Two Plays: Stones In His Pockets, A Night In November, 47.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 46.

  29. 29.

    Lonergan , Theatre and Globalization, 12.

  30. 30.

    Jones, Two Plays: Stones In His Pockets, A Night In November, 21.

  31. 31.

    Ursula Rani Sarma, …touched…, BLUE (London: Oberon Books, 2002), 17.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., 21.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 22.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 24.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 15.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., 31.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 32.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 21.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 39.

  40. 40.

    Mary Leland, “Touched”, The Irish Times, 8 October 1999.

  41. 41.

    Declan Hughes, Plays: 1—Digging For Fire, New Morning, Halloween Night, Love and a Bottle (London: Methuen, 1998), 3.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., x.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., ix.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 35.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 38.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 74.

  47. 47.

    Ibid.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 9.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 29.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 49.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 50.

  52. 52.

    Jason Buchanan, “Living at the End of the Irish Century: Globalization and Identity in Declan Hughes’s Shiver”, Modern Drama 52, Number 3, (Fall 2009): 308–309.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 310.

  54. 54.

    Declan Hughes, Shiver (London: Methuen, 2003), 26.

  55. 55.

    Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 18.

  56. 56.

    Hughes, Shiver, 70.

  57. 57.

    Buchanan, “Living at the End of the Irish Century”, 320.

  58. 58.

    Billy Roche, The Wexford Trilogy: A Handful of Stars, Poor Beast in the Rain, Belfry (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000), 2.

  59. 59.

    Ibid.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 33.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 34.

  62. 62.

    Christopher Murray in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, ed. Eamonn Jordan (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2000), 209.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., 210.

  64. 64.

    Sheridan, “John B. tills a fertile field”, 9.

  65. 65.

    Roche, The Wexford Trilogy, 37.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., 20.

  67. 67.

    Ibid., 47.

  68. 68.

    Murray in Murray in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, 213.

  69. 69.

    Roche, The Wexford Trilogy, 61.

  70. 70.

    Ibid., 64.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 60.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 65.

  73. 73.

    Murray in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, 214.

  74. 74.

    Roche, The Wexford Trilogy, 68.

  75. 75.

    Murray in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, 214.

  76. 76.

    Roche, The Wexford Trilogy, 109.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., 91.

  78. 78.

    Ibid., 99.

  79. 79.

    Ibid., 72.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., 70.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., 188.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., 93.

  83. 83.

    Ibid., 107.

  84. 84.

    Ibid., 108.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., 121.

  86. 86.

    Ibid., 120.

  87. 87.

    Ibid., 122.

  88. 88.

    Murray in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, 216.

  89. 89.

    Hughes, Plays: 1, 74.

  90. 90.

    Buchanan, “Living at the End of the Irish Century”, 320.

  91. 91.

    Lonergan , Theatre and Globalization, 104–107.

  92. 92.

    Grene, “Ireland in Two Minds”, 301.

  93. 93.

    Mary Trotter, Modern Irish Theatre (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 195.

  94. 94.

    Ibid., 196.

  95. 95.

    Declan Hughes in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, 9.

  96. 96.

    Ibid., 12.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Researcher, Kerry, Ireland

    Brian Devaney

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  1. Brian Devaney
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eamonn Jordan

  2. School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eric Weitz

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Devaney, B. (2018). Between the City and the Village: Liminal Spaces and Ambivalent Identities in Contemporary Irish Theatre. In: Jordan, E., Weitz, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58588-2_41

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