Drama Term Tuesday #25
/Irish Drama
Early Irish-Gaelic culture had no known distinctive drama forms but relied on epic, saga and lyric. It was not until the colonisation of Ireland by English culture and the subsequent struggle for an Irish identity that drama emerged as a driving force.
The establishment of the Irish Literary Theatre movement in 1897 and the translation of Irish heroic legend and peasant tales to the stage through writers such as Lady Gregory, Synge and Yeats proved to be a powerful catalyst to Irish drama and establishment of theatres such as The Abbey. Irish drama has been driven by a need to replace the caricature of the “stage Irish stock character” and a search to find poetic non-realistic theatre that restored primacy of feeling. It served political purposes and has often been the centre of controversy.
Irish drama is dominated by the “sovereignty of words”, the capacity to use language with lyrical and poetic intent to shape and construct meaning, “we can make this country whatever we want to be by saying so”.
In the 20th century, Irish drama could be characterised as realist drama in poetic transformation.
John Milington Synge (1871 - 1909) Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea; Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) The Shadow of the Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars.
