Drama and Theatre Studies (Peer-reviewed publications)
https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2257
2024-03-28T23:21:05ZThe teacher as co-creator of drama: a phenomenological study of the experiences and reflections of Irish primary school teachers.
https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/3055
The teacher as co-creator of drama: a phenomenological study of the experiences and reflections of Irish primary school teachers.
Classroom drama in the Irish primary school context remains a relatively new endeavour and is largely under-researched. The knowledge base for all aspects of teacher education should be informed by rigorous reflection on teachers’ experiences in the classroom. This paper reports on a phenomenological study conducted with seven Irish primary school teachers which focused on their experiences of co-creating drama with their students. Co-creating drama is held in this work to be the coming together of teacher and students in a collective creative enterprise during the drama lesson. The term proposes a partnership whereby they operate as co-participants and co-artists in the drama experience. The ‘creating’ aspect of co-creating can be considered the artistic enterprise of making drama in a way that is new and unique to the group. In considering the teacher as a potential co-creator of drama, the paper probes the emergent and changing ontological attitudes of the participants throughout the process: the values, attitudes and perspectives that informed their teaching. The paper illuminates the phenomenon of teachers co-creating drama in all its complexity, and seeks to reflect on the meaning of this for the teachers.
2017-05-24T00:00:00ZThe transnational roots of key figures from the early years of the Gate Theatre, Dublin (Pre-published)
https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2961
The transnational roots of key figures from the early years of the Gate Theatre, Dublin (Pre-published)
When considering the avant-garde nature of the early Gate Theatre, critics rightly focus on the queer sexuality and liberal politics of many of the people associated with the theatre at the time. However, it is also important to consider the transnational backgrounds of so many based at the Gate then – especially those individuals whose outsider status and interest in the outré could be linked not simply to foreign origins but also to ethnic and cultural hybridity. This chapter will fill in many gaps and correct various misconceptions regarding the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of four key, English-born figures associated with the early the under-regarded actor, costume designer and milliner Nancy Beckh. It will be made clear that the work of these four artists at the Gate cannot be dismissed as examples of people from comfortable English backgrounds condescendingly engaging in cultural imperialism (i.e. treating the ‘exotic’ cultures of people from marginalized countries like Ireland and various states in Africa and Asia as artistic ‘raw material’) or shallow cosmopolitanism (Stewart 330). Rather, the mixed backgrounds of these artists helped them to create what scholars in the emerging field of ‘new interculturalism’ call ‘intercultural performances’.
2020-11-04T00:00:00ZTraumatic childhood memories and the adult political visions of Sinéad O’Connor, Bono, and Phil Lynott (Pre-published)
https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2942
Traumatic childhood memories and the adult political visions of Sinéad O’Connor, Bono, and Phil Lynott (Pre-published)
Sinéad O’Connor, Paul “Bono” Hewson of U2, and the late Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy are
three of Ireland’s most famous rock musicians, but that is not all that these celebrated singer
songwriters have in common. Memories of traumatic events and/or circumstances from their
formative years in Dublin greatly influenced the political visions of all three artists in later
life, as expressed through their lyrics and live performances. In O’Connor’s songs protesting
the handling of abuse cases by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and England’s ill treatment of
the peoples it has colonised,1 she has repeatedly returned to the image of the abused or
endangered child – a reflection of what she has called the “torture” suffered at the hands of
her mother in childhood (qtd in Loughrey). Likewise, the effect of the May 1974 Dublin
bombings perpetrated by loyalist paramilitaries on Bono and his best friend’s brother, Andy
Rowen, inspired several important U2 songs. Examples include tracks addressing Northern
Irish violence, the reconciling of Catholic and Protestant Irishness (which – obviously – also
relates to Bono’s half-Catholic, half-Protestant background) and heroin abuse in 1980s
Dublin. Finally, while Phil Lynott’s music was not used for political activism in the way – or
to the degree – that O’Connor’s and U2’s has been, there is one highly significant political
agenda in his work. His experiences of racial prejudice during his Dublin childhood led him
to repeatedly (if sometimes subtly) assert the validity and power of a black Irish identity.
2020-02-17T00:00:00ZReflections on classic Gate plays by Mary Manning, Christine Longford, and Maura Laverty (Pre-published version)
https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/2873
Reflections on classic Gate plays by Mary Manning, Christine Longford, and Maura Laverty (Pre-published version)
Last June, the Waking the Feminists organisation published Gender Counts (its eagerly-anticipated report on gender representation in Irish theatre), and the report confirmed what many Irish theatre fans suspected: during the period under scrutiny (2006-2015), Dublin’s Gate Theatre put on fewer plays by women than any other Arts Council-funded theatre organisation in the country.1 While it is wonderful that light has been shone on this egregious manifestation of conscious and unconscious gender bias, it is also important to note that the Gate was not always resistant to staging the work of female playwrights. Indeed, during the theatre’s early decades, many of its most important and successful new plays were written by women, and the outstanding work by these playwrights has been underappreciated for far too long.
Reflections on classic Gate plays by Mary Manning, Christine Longford, and Maura Laverty.
2018-01-01T00:00:00Z