Drama, opera, ballet, circuses, concerts, and puppet-shows: down the years, all these species of live entertainment faced innumerable difficulties in Ireland. The challenges that are the focus in this unusual study are those that touched on matters of law. Assorted venues encountered episodes of censorship and of riot. Safety of buildings, performers' contracts, dramatic authors' performing rights, liquor licensing all merit attention too, as, indeed, necessarily must the issue of the lawfulness of any 'theatrical' activity itself, given the ill-defined powers of the Irish Master of the Revels (1638-1830) and the controls exerciseable under the Dublin Stage Regulation Act (1786-1997). (Series: Irish Legal History Society - Vol. 24) [Subject: Irish Studies, Legal History, Drama]

This book traces a significant shift in 20th century Irish theatre from the largely national plays produced in Dublin to a more expansive international art form. Confirmed by the recent success outside of Ireland of the "third wave" of Irish playwrights writing in the 1990s, the new Irish drama has encouraged critics to reconsider both the early national theatre and the dramatic tradition it fostered. On the occasion of the centenary of the first professional production of the Irish Literary Theatre, the contributors to this volume investigate contemporary Irish drama's aesthetic features and socio-political commitments and re-read the plays produced earlier in the century. Although these essayists cover a wide range of topics, from the productions and objectives of the Abbey Theatre's first rivals to mid-century theatre festivals, to plays about the "Troubles" in the North, they all reassess the oppositions so commonplace in critical discussions of Irish drama: nationalism vs. internationalism, high vs. low culture, urban experience vs. rural or peasant life. A Century of Irish Drama includes essays on such figures as W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Christina Read, Martin McDonagh, and many more. Stephen Watt is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington, and author of Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage, Joyce, O'Casey, and the Irish Popular Theatre, and essays on Irish and Irish-American culture. He has also written extensively on higher education, most recently Academic Keywords: A Devil's Dictionary for Higher Education (with Cary Nelson). Eileen M. Morgan is a lecturer in English and Irish Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is currently working on Sean O'Faolain's biographies of De Valera and on Edna O'Brien's 1990s trilogy, and is preparing a book-length study on the influence of radio in Ireland. Shakir Mustafa is a Visiting Instructor in the English department at Indiana University. His work has appeared in such journals as New Hibernia Review and The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, and he is now translating Arabic short stories into English. Drama and Performance Studies--Timothy Wiles, general editor

Over the years American—especially New York—audiences have evolved a consistent set of expectations for the "Irish play." Traditionally the term implied a specific subject matter, invariably rural and Catholic, and embodied a reductive notion of Irish drama and society. This view continues to influence the types of Irish drama produced in the United States today. By examining seven different opening nights in New York theaters over the course of the last century, John Harrington considers the reception of Irish drama on the American stage and explores the complex interplay between drama and audience expectations. All of these productions provoked some form of public disagreement when they were first staged in New York, ranging from the confrontation between Shaw and the Society for the Suppression of Vice to the intellectual outcry provoked by billing Waiting for Godot as "the laugh sensation of two continents." The inaugural volume in the series Irish Literature, History, and Culture, The Irish Play on the New York Stage explores the New York premieres of The Shaughraun (1874), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1911), Exiles (1925), Within the Gates (1934), Waiting for Godot (1956), and Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1966).

Provides an historical overview of women's mythmaking and thus their contributions to, and an alternative genealogy of, modern Irish theatre.

'Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage' is a collective study of the intricacies of trans-cultural migration of dramatic works and a re-examination of irish theatre from 1890 to the present day.