A century ago this year, productions of W. B. Yeats's iThe Countess Cathleen/i and Edward Martyn's iThe Heather Field/i inaugurated the Irish Literary Theatre, which was to take its name from its home in Abbey Street, Dublin. Despite riot, fire, and critical controversy, the Abbey Theatre hashoused Ireland's National Theatre ever since: at once the catalyst and focus for the almost unprecedented renaissance of drama witnessed by Ireland in the twentieth century. This is the first history of the Abbey to discuss the plays and the personalities in their underlying historical and politicalcontext, to give due weight to the theatre's work in Irish, and to take stock of its artistic and financial development up to the present. The research for the book draws extensively on archive sources, especially the manuscript holdings on the Abbey at the National Library of Ireland.Many outstanding plays are examined, with detailed analysis of their form and their affective and emotional content; and persistent themes in the Abbey's output are identified - visions of an ideal community; the revival of Irish; the hunger for land and money; the restrictions of a societyundergoing profound change. But these are integrated with accounts of the Abbey's people, from Yeats, Martyn, and Lady Gregory, whose brainchild it was, to the actors, playwrights, directors, and managers who have followed - among them the Fays, Synge, O'Casey, Murray, Robinson, Shiels, Johnston,Murphy, Molloy, Friel, McGuiness, Deevy, Carr, and many others. The role of directors and policy-makers, and the struggle for financial security, subsidy, and new-style 'partnerships', is discussed as a crucial part of the theatre's continuing evolution.

This major new study presents a political and cultural history of some of Ireland's key national theatre projects from the 1890s to the 1990s. Impressively wide-ranging in coverage, Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People includes discussions on: *the politics of the Irish literary movement at the Abbey Theatre before and after political independence; *the role of a state-sponsored theatre for the post-1922 unionist government in Northern Ireland; *the convulsive effects of the Northern Ireland conflict on Irish theatre. Lionel Pilkington draws on a combination of archival research and critical readings of individual plays, covering works by J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, George Shiels, Brian Friel, and Frank McGuinness. In its insistence on the details of history, this is a book important to anyone interested in Irish culture and politics in the twentieth century.

"In diaries covering the period of his artistic directorship of the Abbey, Ben Barnes offers a frank, honest, and probing account of a much commented upon and controversial period in the history of the national theatre. These diaries also provide fascinating personal insights into the day to day pressures, joys, and frustrations of running one of Ireland's most iconic institutions. For over a century now the Abbey has conducted its love/hate relationship with the Irish public and the wider international audience, and in Plays and Controversies Ben Barnes illuminates his own eventful chapter in that absorbing story - the impact of a fascinating still-remembered chapter in the story of the Abbey Theatre, related at first hand with a fire and a vigorous sense of commitment comparable to that of the founding fathers. Christopher FitzSimoms-Barnes addresses a moment in Irish cultural history which stands as a many-sided cautionary tale. It is the tale of an embattled man, a courageous man, who dares to borrow Yeats's title because he found himself for a time in similar circumstances running the national theatre though in altogether different conditions. Chris Murray. We believe that this book is an important historical record of a recent tumultuous period in relation to the Abbey Theatre and anticipate that it will make a worthwhile contribution to lively cultural debate on theatre, history and politics."--BOOK JACKET.

I Never Had A Proper Jobis a charming memoir which covers many subjects: the Catholic Church's power over society; corporal punishment in schools; poverty; war-time rationing; and the general innocence of children at the time. However, it avoids falling into the category of yet another biography set in 'Old Dublin' for it is told from the unique perspective of a boy who wants to be an actor. Such a decision challenges everything he is taught including the course set out for his solid job. Delving into the world of Theatre and Drama, Cassin recalls the actors and stars of his time; he records the fit-up touring days; running a tiny theatre club in Baggot Street, Dublin, and a 200-seater, the 37 Theatre Club in O'Connell Street before the fire authorities and then a business firm ejected him. While the harsh reality of the Dublin of the time is ever-present,I Never Had A Proper Jobexplores an alternative side of it in the Arts scene at work. Not all his stories are from the theatre. This is the story of Barry Cassin, the child, man, husband and father. He recalls his youth, his parents, and particularly his wife, Nancy, who failed totally to turn him into a farmer. The result is a delightful and entertaining read. A must-have for not only theatre and culture aficionados, but those interested in a way of living long-gone.

This book addresses the notion posed by Thomas Kilroy in his definition of a playwright’s creative process: ‘We write plays, I feel, in order to populate the stage’. It gathers eclectic reflections on contemporary Irish theatre from both Irish theatre practitioners and international academics. The eighteen contributions offer innovative perspectives on Irish theatre since the early 1990s up to the present, testifying to the development of themes explored by emerging and established playwrights as well as to the (r)evolutions in practices and approaches to the stage that have taken place in the last thirty years. This cross-disciplinary collection devotes as much attention to contextual questions and approaches to the stage in practice as it does to the play text in its traditional and revised forms. The essays and interviews encourage dialectic exchange between analytical studies on contemporary Irish theatre and contributions by theatre practitioners.