New Publication: Populating the Stage
Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre:
Populating the Stage
Edited by Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
ISBN 978-3-319-59710-2
320 pages.
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.
Contents
Foreword, by Thomas Kilroy
Chapter 1. Introduction
Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost
PART I. DRAMATURGICAL APPROACHES
Chapter 2. Innovation meets Evocation: Tom Mac Intyre’s plays at the Peacock Theatre.
Marie Kelly
Chapter 3. From Dementia to Utopia: Tragedy and Transcendence in Frank McGuinness’s The Hanging Gardens.
Matthieu Kolb
Chapter 4. Women and Scarecrows: Marina Carr’s Stage Bodies.
Mary Noonan
Chapter 5. McDonagh’s True, Lonesome West.
Maria Isabel Seguro
Chapter 6. The physical and verbal theatre of Michael West.
Nicholas Grene
Chapter 7. A Dark Rosebud on the Irish Stage: Ailís Ní Ríain’s Tallest Man in the World.
Thierry Dubost
PART II. PRACTITIONERS’ VOICES
Chapter 8. Death of A Playwright
Geoff Gould
Chapter 9. Looking back and forward on sound design: Irish theatre transformed.
Cormac O’Connor
Chapter 10. Lightning in a Bottle: the BrokenCrow Experiment.
Ronan FitzGibbon
Chapter 11. Interview with Bríd Ó Gallchoir
Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost
Chapter 12. Interview with Pat Kinevane
Anne Etienne
Chapter 13. Interview with Mark O’Rowe
Thierry Dubost and Anne Etienne
Chapter 14. Enda Walsh, in conversation with Ger FitzGibbon.
Ger FitzGibbon
PART III. POLITICAL AND SOCIETAL REFLECTIONS ON THE STAGE
Chapter 15. Slump and Punk in Ray Scannell’s Losing Steam: Envisioning Corcadorca.
Anne Etienne
Chapter 16. Through A Glass, Darkly: Priests on the Contemporary Irish Stage.
Virginie Roche-Tiengo
Chapter 17. Populating the Irish Stage with (Dis)Abled Bodies: Sanctuary by Christian O’Reilly and the Blue Teapot Company.
Katarzyna Ojrzyńska
Chapter 18. Queering the Irish Stage: Shame, Sexuality, and the Politics of Testimonial.
Cormac O’Brien
Chapter 19. A Gendered Absence: Feminist theatre, Glasshouse Productions, and the #WTF movement.
Patricia O’Beirne