Frank McGuinness's Dramaturgy of Difference and the Irish Theatre

Frank McGuinness's Dramaturgy of Difference and the Irish Theatre PDF Author: David Cregan
Publisher: Irish Studies
ISBN: 9781433109331
Category : Northern Ireland
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book is the broad application of queer theories to the original plays of the contemporary Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness, the only author in Ireland to consistently utilize gay and lesbian themes in his writing. McGuinness continually represents sexual difference in his character development in a way that previous Irish authors have not. In particular McGuinness portrays homosexual protagonists in his dramas, allowing the queer the narrative prerogative, not merely a secondary role in the formation of theatrical perspective. Often it is the homosexual who tells the story or alters the plot through his or her alternative perspective. This book not only analyzes the queer in McGuinness's work, but also contributes to a widening of the conversation and criticism on Irish theatre in general. Its implementation of the internationally recognized paradigm of analysis, queer theory, is cutting-edge in its contribution to the general field of Irish studies as well. As a result of its two-fold agenda of theatrical and cultural analysis, this book not only brings together theories of the queer and the theatre of McGuinness, but it also maps the way in which this queer dramaturgy intersects with contemporary Irish society as it faces a new era of cultural re-invention.

Frank McGuinness's Dramaturgy of Difference and the Irish Theatre

Frank McGuinness's Dramaturgy of Difference and the Irish Theatre PDF Author: David Cregan
Publisher: Irish Studies
ISBN: 9781433109331
Category : Northern Ireland
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the broad application of queer theories to the original plays of the contemporary Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness, the only author in Ireland to consistently utilize gay and lesbian themes in his writing. McGuinness continually represents sexual difference in his character development in a way that previous Irish authors have not. In particular McGuinness portrays homosexual protagonists in his dramas, allowing the queer the narrative prerogative, not merely a secondary role in the formation of theatrical perspective. Often it is the homosexual who tells the story or alters the plot through his or her alternative perspective. This book not only analyzes the queer in McGuinness's work, but also contributes to a widening of the conversation and criticism on Irish theatre in general. Its implementation of the internationally recognized paradigm of analysis, queer theory, is cutting-edge in its contribution to the general field of Irish studies as well. As a result of its two-fold agenda of theatrical and cultural analysis, this book not only brings together theories of the queer and the theatre of McGuinness, but it also maps the way in which this queer dramaturgy intersects with contemporary Irish society as it faces a new era of cultural re-invention.

"Celebrating Confusion"

Author: Kenneth Nally
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443803650
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Though widely lauded as one of the most creative and challenging forces in Irish theatre Frank McGuinness’s plays have often met with a tempestuous reception. This new work details the significance of key productions of his plays in the context of Ireland’s culture and society. Charting McGuinness’s development as a dramatist from The Factory Girls through to Gates of Gold it combines cultural, political and theatrical analysis to position McGuinness as the most significant Irish playwright of his generation. Textual analysis supports considerations of theatrical performance to show how visual art, stagecraft, sculpture and song are central to our understanding of McGuinness’s theatre. Drawing forth the range of sexual, familial and national identities found in McGuinness’s work this book shows the significance of symbols in theatre that often seeks to confuse the simplicities of absolutes in order to show the complexities of difference. Wide-ranging, theoretically astute and written in a lucid and engaging style, Celebrating Confusion will appeal to all readers who are interested in Irish Theatre and its intersection with the politics and culture of contemporary Ireland.

Contexts for Frank McGuinness's Drama

Contexts for Frank McGuinness's Drama PDF Author: Helen Lojek
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813213569
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Contexts for Frank McGuinness's Drama is the most complete consideration of the playwright yet published, including discussion of his original stage work through Gates of Gold (2002) and highlighting the connections between McGuinness's creativity and the biographical, geographical, social, and literary factors that have shaped his world."

The Theatre of Frank McGuinness

The Theatre of Frank McGuinness PDF Author: Helen Lojek
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781904505013
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The first edited collection of essays about internationally renowned Irish playwright Frank McGuinness focuses on both performance and text. Interpreters come to diverse conclusions, creating a vigorous dialogue that enriches understanding and reflects a strong consensus about the value of McGuinness's complex work. REVIEWS ". . . a fascinating and diverse collection of reactions to the work of Frank McGuinness". Reviewed by : Patrick Mason ". . . Frank McGuinness's drama in its richness and variety calls out for what this collection of essays supplies: A multi-authored volume by both practitioners and academics.....thoughtful, stimulating collection". Reviewed by : Anthony Roche "The diversity of the playwright's work is well matched in the collection by the scale of the different approaches the authors of the essays and talks take...I recommend the book especially to those who McGuinness difficult, but all readers are likely to put it down enriched and with a reformed view of drama and theatre in general" Reviewed by : Maria Kurdi, Drama League Magazine of Ireland, Spring 2004

The Feast of Famine

The Feast of Famine PDF Author: Eamonn Jordan
Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Here for the first time is a major critical evaluation of the award-winning Northern Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, best known for the landmark plays Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme and Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. McGuinness's plays have been performed throughout the world and his adaptations of Ibsen and Chekhov in particular have been acclaimed internationally. Memory, history, myth, identity and performance are recurring themes in McGuinness's drama. His work is always formally inventive, demanding, generous and rigorously aggressive in a way that makes his theatre a confrontational, salient and enlightening experience. The Feast of Famine is a precise and provocative frame within which to place the work. The title captures the confluence of contradictory forces: the celebratory and communal notions of festivity and the destructive intensity of famine. This study ultimately places these dynamic energies within a carnivalesque consciousness which is transgressive and highly theatrical.

Dissident Dramaturgies

Dissident Dramaturgies PDF Author: Eamonn Jordan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
From Boston to Berlin, and from Belfast to Beijing, the performances of Irish plays have been greeted with critical and box-office acclaim. Plays by Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Marie Jones, Martin McDonagh, Frank McGuinness, Tom Murphy, Mark O'Rowe, Conor McPherson and Enda Walsh have toured extensively, and have been translated and adapted for new performance contexts. This book examines the dominant approaches and the recurrent and variable dramaturgical patterns in the writings of the contemporary generation of writers from 1980 to the present. Six very specific, dominant configurations or constructions that shape the blatant dramaturgy of Irish Theatre will be considered in individual chapters that focus the relationships between history, memory and metatheatre, how the notion of innocence is contested, the various deployments of a range of myths by contemporary playwrights, the consequences of perverting pastoral consciousness, and the implications and repercussions of storytelling to a tradition of writing. In all of the work produced both locally and abroad, Ireland and a coerced and admired notion of 'Irishness' function in part as a commodity but also as something uniquely defiant, liberating and dissident in itself.

The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance

The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance PDF Author: Eamonn Jordan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137585889
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 862

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Book Description
This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.

Fifty Key Irish Plays

Fifty Key Irish Plays PDF Author: Shaun Richards
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000631273
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Fifty Key Irish Plays charts the progression of modern Irish drama from Dion Boucicault’s entry on to the global stage of the Irish diaspora to the contemporary dramas created by the experiences of the New Irish. Each chapter provides a brief plot outline along with informed analysis and, alert to the cultural and critical context of each play, an account of the key roles that they played in the developing story of Irish drama. While the core of the collection is based on the critical canon, including work by J. M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Teresa Deevy, and Brian Friel, plays such as Tom Mac Intyre’s The Great Hunger and ANU Productions’ Laundry, which illuminate routes away from the mainstream, are also included. With a focus on the development of form as well as theme, the collection guides the reader to an informed overview of Irish theatre via succinct and insightful essays by an international team of academics. This invaluable collection will be of particular interest to undergraduate students of theatre and performance studies and to lay readers looking to expand their appreciation of Irish drama.

Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland

Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland PDF Author: Fintan Walsh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137534508
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book examines the surge of queer performance produced across Ireland since the first stirrings of the Celtic Tiger in the mid-1990s, up to the passing of the Marriage Equality referendum in the Republic in 2015.

Masculinities and Manhood in Contemporary Irish Drama

Masculinities and Manhood in Contemporary Irish Drama PDF Author: Cormac O'Brien
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030840751
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book charts the journey, in terms of both stasis and change, that masculinities and manhood have made in Irish drama, and by extension in the broader culture and society, from the 1960s to the present. Examining a diverse corpus of drama and theatre events, both mainstream and on the fringe, this study critically elaborates a seismic shift in Irish masculinities. This book argues, then, that Irish manhood has shifted from embodying and enacting post-colonial concerns of nationalism and national identity, to performing models of masculinity that are driven and moulded by the political and cultural practices of neoliberal capitalism. Masculinities and Manhood in Contemporary Irish Drama charts this shift through chapters on performing masculinity in plays set in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and through several chapters that focus on Women’s and Queer drama. It thus takes its readers on a journey: a journey that begins with an overtly patriarchal, nationalist manhood that often made direct comment on the state of the nation, and ultimately arrives at several arguably regressive forms of globalised masculinity, which are couched in misaligned notions of individualism and free-choice and that frequently perceive themselves as being in crisis.