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English drama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Drama was introduced to England from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose. By the medieval period, the mummers' plays had developed, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality. The medieval mystery plays and morality plays, which dealt with Christian themes, were performed at religious festivals.

William Shakespeare, chief figure of the English Renaissance, is here seen in the Chandos portrait.The period known as the English Renaissance, approximately 1500—1660, saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. The most famous example of the mystery play, Everyman, and the two candidates for the earliest comedy in English Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister and the anonymous Gammer Gurton's Needle, all belong to the 16th century.

During the reign of Elizabeth I in the late 16th and early 17th century, a London-centred culture that was both courtly and popular produced great poetry and drama. Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. He was himself an actor and deeply involved in the running of the theatre company that performed his plays. Other important playwrights of this period include Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and John Webster. Various types of plays were popular. Ben Jonson, for example, was often engaged to write courtly masques, ornate plays where the actors wore masks. The three types that seem most often studied today are the histories, the comedies, and the tragedies. Most playwrights tended to specialise in one or another of these, but Shakespeare is remarkable in that he produced all three types. His around 40 plays include tragedies such as Hamlet (1603), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605); comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594—96) and Twelfth Night (1602); and history plays such as Henry IV, part 1—2. Some have hypothesized that the English Renaissance paved the way for the sudden dominance of drama in English society, arguing that the questioning mode popular during this time was best served by the competing characters in the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists.

Aphra Behn was the first professional English woman playwright.During the Interregnum 1649—1660, English theatres were kept closed by the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. When the London theatres opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they flourished under the personal interest and support of Charles II. Wide and socially mixed audiences were attracted by topical writing and by the introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare's time, all female roles had been played by boys). New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic drama, and Restoration comedy. Notable heroic tragedies of this period include John Dryden's All for Love (1677) and (Aureng-Zebe) (1675), and Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved (1682). The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1676), John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696), and William Congreve's The Way of the World (1700). This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, author of many comedies including The Rover (1677). Restoration comedy is famous or notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court.

In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy lost favour, to be replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian opera. Popular entertainment became more dominant in this period than ever before. Fair-booth burlesque and musical entertainment, the ancestors of the English Music Hall, flourished at the expense of legitimate English drama, which went into a long period of decline. By the early 19th century, the drama was no longer represented by stage plays at all, but by closet drama, plays written to be privately read in a "closet" (a small domestic room).

A change came in the later 19th century with the plays on the London stage by the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, all of whom influenced domestic English drama and vitalised it again.

Today the West End of London has a large number of theatres, particularly centred around Shaftesbury Avenue. A prolific writer of words for musicals of the 20th century, Andrew Lloyd Webber, has dominated the West End for a number of years, and his works have travelled to Broadway in New York and around the world, as well as being turned into film.

The Royal Shakespeare Company operates out of Stratford-upon-Avon, producing mainly but not exclusively Shakespeare's plays.

The history of Irish theatre begins with the rise of the English administration in Dublin at the start of the 17th century. Over the next 400 years this small country was to make a disproportionate contribution to drama in English.

In the early days of its history, theatrical productions in Ireland tended to serve the political purposes of the administration, but as more theatres opened and the popular audience grew, a more diverse range of entertainments were staged. Many Dublin-based theatres developed links with their London equivalents and performers and productions from the British capital frequently found their way to the Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights from William Congreve to George Bernard Shaw found it necessary to go abroad to establish themselves.

At the beginning of the 20th century, theatres and theatre companies dedicated to the staging of Irish plays and the development of indigenous writers, directors and performers began to emerge. This allowed many of the most significant Irish dramatists to learn their trade and establish their reputations at home rather than in Britain or the United States.

Small beginnings
Although there would appear to have been performances of plays on religious themes in Ireland from as early as the 14th century, the first well-documented instance of a theatrical production in Ireland is a 1601 staging of Gorboduc presented by Lord Mountjoy Lord Deputy of Ireland in the Great Hall in Dublin Castle. The play had been written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton for the 1561/2 Christmas festivities at the Inner Temple in London and appears to have been selected because it was a story of a divided kingdom descending into anarchy that was applicable to the situation in Ireland at the time of the performance. Mountjoy started a fashion, and private performances became quite commonplace in great houses all over Ireland over the following thirty years.

The Court in Kilkenny
In 1642, as a result of the English Civil War, Dublin Royalists were forced to flee the city. Many of them went to Kilkenny to join a confederacy of Old English and Irish that formed in that city. Kilkenny had a tradition of dramatic performance going back to 1366, and the Dublin company, much attenuated, set up in their new home. At least one new play was published in Kilkenny; A Tragedy of Cola's Fury, OR, Lirenda's Misery, a blatantly political work with the Lirenda of the title being an anagram of Ireland.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, John Ogilby was commissioned to design the triumphal arches and write masques for the new king's entrance into London. Ogilby was reinstated as Master of the Revels and returned to Dublin to open a new theatre in Smock Alley. Although starting well, this new theatre was essentially under the control of the administration in Dublin castle and staged mainly pro-Stuart works and Shakespearean classics. As a result, Irish playwrights and actors of real talent were drawn to London.

The Restoration
An early example of this trend is William Congreve, one of the most important writers for the late 18th London stage. Although born in Yorkshire, Congreve grew up in Ireland and studied with Jonathan Swift in Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating, Congreve moved to London to study law at the Temple and pursue a literary career. His first play, The Old Bachelor (1693) was sponsored by John Dryden, and he went on to write at least four more plays. The last of these, The Way of the World (1700) is the one Congreve work regularly revived on the modern stage. However, at the time of its creation, it was a relative failure and he wrote no further works for the theatre.

With the accession to the throne of William of Orange, the whole ethos of Dublin Castle, including its attitude to the theatre, changed. Smock Alley stayed in existence until 1811 and new theatres, such as the Theatre Royal, Queens' Theatre, and The Gaiety Theatre opened during the 19th century. However, the one constant for the next 200 years was that the main action in the history of Irish theatre happened abroad, mainly in London.

The 18th century

Oliver GoldsmithThe 18th century saw the emergence of two major Irish dramatists, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century. Goldsmith (1728–1774) was born in Roscommon and grew up in extremely rural surroundings. He entered Trinity College in 1745 and graduated in 1749. He returned to the family home, and in 1751, began to travel, finally settling in London in 1756, where he published poetry, prose and two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768 and She Stoops to Conquer 1773. This latter was a huge success and is still regularly revived.

Sheridan (1751–1816) was born in Dublin into a family with a strong literary and theatrical tradition. His mother was a writer and his father was manager of Smock Alley Theatre. The family moved to England in the 1750s, and Sheridan attended Harrow Public School. His first play, The Rivals 1775, was performed at Covent Garden and was an instant success. He went on to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with plays like The School for Scandal and The Critic. He was owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, which he bought from David Garrick. The theatre burned down in 1809, and Sheridan lived out the rest of his life in reduced circumstances. He is buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

The 19th century
After Sheridan, the next Irish dramatist of historical importance was Dion Boucicault (1820–1890). Boucicault was born in Dublin but was sent to England to complete his education. At school, he began writing dramatic sketches and soon took up acting under the stage name of Lee Moreton. His first play was Legend of Devil's Dyke 1838 in which he acted himself in Brighton. His first London production was London Assurance 1841. This was a great success and he seemed set to become the major writer of comedies of his day. However, his next few plays were not as successful and Boucicault found himself in debt. He recovered some of his reputation with The Corsican Brothers (1852), a well constructed melodrama.

In 1853, he moved to New York, where he soon became a hit with plays like The Poor of New York (1857), Dot (1859, based on Charles Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth) and The Octoroon (1859). These plays tackled issues such as urban poverty and slavery. Boucicault was also involved in getting the 1856 law on copyright passed through Congress. His last New York play was The Colleen Bawn (1860). In that year, Boucicault returned to London to stage The Colleen Bawn and the play ran for 247 performances at The Adelphi Theatre. He wrote several more successful plays, including The Shaughran (1875) and Robert Emmet (1884). These later plays helped perpetuate the stereotype of the drunken, hotheaded, garrulous Irishman that had been common on the British stage since the time of Shakespeare. Other Irish dramatists of the period include John Banim and Gerald Griffin, whose novel The Collegians formed the basis for The Colleen Bawn.

Boucicault is widely regarded as the wittiest Irish dramatist between Sheridan and Oscar Wilde (1845–1900). Wilde was born in Dublin into a literary family and studied at Trinity College, where he had a brilliant career. In 1874 he won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he began his career as a writer, winning the Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna. His studies were cut short during his second year at Oxford when his father died leaving large debts.

During a short but glittering literary career, Wilde wrote poetry, short stories, criticism and a novel, but his plays probably represent his most enduring legacy. Wilde's first stage success came with Lady Windemere's Fan (1892), which resulted in his becoming the most talked about dramatist in London. He followed this up with A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and his most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest that same year.

George Bernard ShawWith these plays, Wilde came to dominate late-Victorian era British theatre. His plays are noted for the lightness of their wit, but he also contrived to address some serious issues around sexual and class roles and identity, as he wrote himself 'treating the serious things lightly and the light things seriously'. Events in Wilde's personal life were to overtake his literary success and he died in Paris in 1900. He remains one of the great figures in the history of Irish theatre and his plays are frequently performed all over the English-speaking world.

Wilde's contemporary George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a very different kind of writer. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876 intending to become a novelist. Here he became active in socialist politics and became a member of the Fabian Society. He was also a very public vegetarian. His writing for the stage was influenced by Henrik Ibsen. His early political plays were not popular, but he made a breakthrough with John Bull's Other Island (1904). Shaw was extremely prolific, and his collected writings filled 36 volumes. Many of his plays are now forgotten, but a number, including Major Barbara, Saint Joan (usually considered his masterpiece) and Pygmalion are still regularly performed. Pygmalion was the basis for the movie My Fair Lady, a fact which benefitted the National Gallery of Ireland as Shaw had left the royalties of the play to the gallery. A statue to the playwright now stands outside the gallery entrance. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924.

The Abbey and after

A poster for the opening run at the Abbey Theatre from December 27, 1904 to January 3, 1905.A sea change in the history of the Irish theatre came with the establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre, later to become the Abbey Theatre. The history of this theatre is well documented, and its importance can be seen from the list of writers whose plays were first performed here in the early days of the 20th century. These included W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, George Moore, and Sean O'Casey. Equally importantly, through the introduction by Yeats, via Ezra Pound, of elements of the Noh theatre of Japan, a tendency to mythologise quotidian situations, and a particularly strong focus on writings in dialects of Hiberno-English, the Abbey was to create a style that held a strong fascination for future Irish dramatists. Indeed, it could almost be said that the Abbey created the basic elements of a national theatrical style.

This period also saw a rise in the writing of plays in Irish, especially after the formation, in 1928, of An Taidhbhearc, a theatre dedicated to the Irish language. The Gate Theatre, also founded in 1928 under the direction of Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir, introduced Irish audiences to many of the classics of the European stage.

Mid 20th century
The twentieth century saw a number of Irish playwrights come to prominence. Samuel Beckett is probably the most significant of these. Beckett had a long career as a novelist and poet before his first play, Waiting for Godot (1953) made him famous. This play, along with his second, Endgame, is one of the great works of absurdist theatre. Beckett was awarded for the Nobel Prize in 1969.

The Lyric Theatre, founded in 1944 by Austin Clarke was based in the Abbey until 1951 and produced many of Clarke's own verse plays. From the mid 1950s, the Unitarian Church at St Stephen's Green, Dublin was home to Amharclann an Damer/The Damer Theatre. The Damer produced both professional and amateur Irish language theatre. The world premier of Brendan Behan's An Giall (The Hostage) took place here in 1957. The theatre closed in the late 1970s. Behan went on to be an extremely popular dramatist, particularly through his work with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London.

Other important Irish dramatists of this period include: Denis Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, and John B. Keane.

Recent developments
In general, the Abbey was the dominant influence in theatre in Ireland across the 20th century. Beckett's example has been almost entirely ignored, although his plays are regularly performed on the Irish stage. Behan, in his use of song and direct address to the audience, was influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Denis Johnston used modernist techniques including found texts and collage, but their works had little impact on the dramatists who came after them. Since the 1970s, a number of companies have emerged to challenge the Abbey's dominance and introduce different styles and approaches. These include Focus Theatre, The Children's T Company, the Project Theatre Company, Mangled Ferret, Druid Theatre, TEAM and Field Day. These companies have nurtured a number of writers, actors, and directors who have since gone on to be successful in London, Broadway and Hollywood or in other literary fields. These include Roddy Doyle, Peter Sheridan, Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Garry Hynes, Martin McDonagh and Gabriel Byrne.

List of Irish dramatists
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of playwrights either born in Ireland or holding Irish citizenship. Playwrights whose work is in Irish are included.

A - D
John Banim
Sebastian Barry
Samuel Beckett
Brendan Behan
Dion Boucicault (1820-1890)
Marina Carr
Paul Vincent Carroll
Austin Clarke
Padraic Colum
William Congreve
Louis D'Alton
Anne Devlin

E - J
St John Ervine
Brian Friel
Oliver Goldsmith
Lady Gregory
Gerald Griffin
Denis Johnston
James Joyce

K - P
John B. Keane
Thomas Kilroy
Jerome Kilty
Hugh Leonard
Walter Macken
Micheál MacLiammoir
Jason Maher
Edward Martyn
John McCann
Frank McGuinness
Conor McPherson
M. J. Molloy
George Moore
John Murphy
Tom Murphy
T. C. Murray
Sean O'Casey
Joseph O'Connor
Mary Devenport O'Neill
Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Q - Z
Lennox Robinson
Billy Roche
G. Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
George Shiels (1881-1949)
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
John Millington Synge
Colm Tóibín
Joseph Tomelty
Mervyn Wall
Oscar Wilde (1845-1900)
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

List of Irish theatres and theatre companies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of Irish theatres and theatre companies past and present.

Abbey Theatre, Dublin (The National Theatre of Ireland)
Ambassador Theatre, Dublin
Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin
Capitol Theatre, Dublin
Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Dublin
Coliseum Theatre, Dublin
Corcadorca Theatre Company
Damer Theatre
Dan Lowrey's Music Hall
Druid Theatre Company
Focus Theatre, Dublin
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
Gate Theatre, Dublin
Irish Literary Theatre, Dublin
Leinster Hall, Dublin
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
Lyric Theatre, Dublin
Mechanics' Theatre, Dublin
New Theatre (Ireland)
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Queen's Theatre, Dublin
SFX City Theatre, Dublin
Siamsa Tire Theatre
An Taidhbhearc
Theatre Royal, Dublin
The Helix, Dublin
The Point Theatre, Dublin
Tivoli Variety Theatre, Dublin
Torch Theatre, Dublin
Town Hall Theatre
W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company

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