Lojek provides extensive analysis of space in plays by living Irish playwrights, applying practical understandings of staging and the insights of geographers and spatial theorists to drama in an era increasingly aware of space.

Morash and Richards present an original approach to understanding how theatre has produced distinctively Irish senses of space and place.

As a serious drama set in an ordinary middle-class home, Ibsen's A Doll's House established a new politics of the interior that was to have a lasting impact upon twentieth-century drama. In this innovative study, Nicholas Grene traces the changing forms of the home on the stage through nine of the greatest of modern plays and playwrights. From Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard through to Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, domestic spaces and personal crises have been employed to express wider social conditions and themes of class, gender and family. In the later twentieth century and beyond, the most radically experimental dramatists created their own challenging theatrical interiors, including Beckett in Endgame, Pinter in The Homecoming and Parks in Topdog/Underdog. Grene analyses the full significance of these versions of domestic spaces to offer fresh insights into the portrayal of the naturalistic environment in modern drama.

This work provides an overview of Irish theatre, read in the light of Ireland's self-definition. Mediating between history and its relations with politics and art, it attempts to do justice to the enabling and mirroring preoccupations of Irish drama.

Featuring original essays by leading scholars in the field, this book explores the immense legacy of women playwrights in Irish theatre since the beginning of theTwentieth century. Chapters consider the intersecting contexts of gender, sexuality and the body in order to investigate the broader cultural, political and historical implications of representing 'woman' on the stage. In addition, a number of essays engage with representations of women by a selection of male playwrights in order to re-evaluate familiar contexts and traditions in Irish drama. Features a Foreword by Marina Carr and a useful appendix of Irish women playwrights and their works.

Drawing on major new archival discoveries and recent research, Patrick Lonergan presents an innovative account of Irish drama and theatre, spanning the past seventy years. Rather than offering a linear narrative, the volume traces key themes to illustrate the relationship between theatre and changes in society. In considering internationalization, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Celtic Tiger period, feminism, and the changing status of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Lonergan asserts the power of theatre to act as an agent of change and uncovers the contribution of individual artists, plays and productions in challenging societal norms. Irish Drama and Theatre since 1950 provides a wide-ranging account of major developments, combined with case studies of the premiere or revival of major plays, the establishment of new companies and the influence of international work and artists, including Tennessee Williams, Chekhov and Brecht. While bringing to the fore some of the untold stories and overlooked playwrights following the declaration of the Irish Republic, Lonergan weaves into his account the many Irish theatre-makers who have achieved international prominence in the period: Samuel Beckett, Siobhán McKenna and Brendan Behan in the 1950s, continuing with Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, and concluding with the playwrights who emerged in the late 1990s, including Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh, Conor McPherson, Marie Jones and Marina Carr. The contribution of major Irish companies to world theatre is also examined, including both the Abbey and Gate theatres, as well as Druid, Field Day and Charabanc. Through its engaging analysis of seventy years of Irish theatre, this volume charts the acts of gradual but revolutionary change that are the story of Irish theatre and drama and of its social and cultural contexts.

By comparing the theatre of Samuel Beckett to more culturally specific Irish plays, the book establishes a greater international and theatrically experimental context for the field than has been recognised. Its three central chapters offer close and contextualised readings of the careers of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Thomas Kilroy across a span of more than four decades. The drama of Northern Ireland and its theatrical response to political violence receives sustained attention through a wide range of playwrights, including Frank McGuinness, Gary Mitchell, Christina Reid and Anne Devlin. A new chapter considers the work of such younger playwrights as Martin McDonagh and Marina Carr who emerged in the 1990s to probe the shortcomings of the 'Celtic Tiger' phenomenon.