Across the margins - An introduction, Glenda Norquay and Gerry Smyth. Part Theorising identities across the Atlantic Archipelago: Ireland, verses, Scotland - Crossing the (English) language barrier, Willy Maley "A warmer memory" - Speaking of Ireland, Colin Graham "Where do you belong?" - De-scribing imperial identity from alien to migrant, Peter Childs Gender and nation - Debatable lands and passable boundaries, Aileen Christianson The union and Jack - British masculinities, pomophobia, and the post-nation, Berthold Schoene Paper margins - The "outside" in poetry in the 1980s and 1990s, Linden Peach Sounding out the margins - Ethnicity and popular music in British cultural studies, Sean Campbell Cool enough for Lou Reed? The plays of Ed Thomas and the cultural politics of South Wales, Shaun Richards Waking up in a different place - Contemporary Irish and Scottish fiction, Glenda Norquay and Gerry Smyth Finding Scottish art, Murdo Macdonald.

Across the margins : cultural identity and change in the Atlantic archipelago

Victorian Bibliography for 1999

Introduction 1. Making space 2. Staging place 3. Spaces of modernity and modernism 4. The calamity of yesterday 5. The fluorescence of place 6. Theatre of the world 7. Theatre of the street Conclusion: spectral spaces.

Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place

This doctoral thesis proposes an ethics of intercultural theatre, offering a materially engaged framework through which to approach both the problematics and positive potential of intercultural practice. Framing intercultural debates in terms of rights of representation, it suggests that the right to represent Othered people and cultures can be strengthened through 1) involvement of members of all represented cultures, 2) equality and creative agency of all collaborators, 3) advantageousness of a given project to all involved, and 4) positive socio-political effects of a production within its performance contexts. Working through four diverse case studies – Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pan Pan Theatre Company’s The Playboy of the Western World, Peter Brook’s 11 and 12 and Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s The Playboy of the Western World – this project uses a Bourdieusian theoretical framework to flag elements of contemporary intercultural practice that strengthen and weaken rights of representation. It recognises that Orientalist and Eurocentric modes of representing Otherness still require address; equally, it points to laudable working practices, moving towards a pragmatics of best intercultural theatre practice.

https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/file/9ceb1133-bc32-192d-f51c-f4d419ac2107/7/EOT_2012_PhD_ROR.ITP.pdf

Rights of representation : an ethics of intercultural theatre practice

This thesis is a consideration of the representations of death in six of Frank McGuinness’s original dramatic works. The objective is to evaluate the connection between these dramatic representations and the social, political and cultural contexts of the plays’ first performances. The main contention is that the connection between these representations and their contexts serves to deepen an understanding of both.
While McGuinness has produced original plays since 1982, the plays considered cover the period from 1985 to 1999. His plays are complex responses to the conditions of contemporary Ireland, particularly the conflict in Northern Ireland. By looking at these conditions through a variety of perspectives, particularly those of “outsiders,” the plays emphasise the need for the acceptance of a broad understanding of identity. These characters articulate their perspectives most clearly in their confrontation with the possibility and reality of death.
In these plays, the characters confront death during periods of conflict from Irish and world history. Facing the dangers of these conflicts, the characters confront the possibility and reality of death collectively, guided and encouraged, for the most part, by “outsider” characters. Their collective bonds allow them to better deal with death’s complex, paradoxical power.
The thesis has three main body chapters, each of which concentrates on two of McGuinness’s plays. Chapter One considers the connection between death and community, and concentrates on the paradox within the demands of both community and individual identity. Chapter Two examines the connection between death and constructions of “Otherness” and focuses on how definitions of Otherness both defend and jeopardise the individual in relation to their Others. Chapter Three explores the connection between death and family relations and looks at how individuals might escape a damaging, haunting legacy by embracing a wider, more inclusive perspective.

From trauma to transformation, death and identity in the plays of Frank McGuinness

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.

Christopher Murray

Papers

Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation