Irish Protestant Playwrights Conference

THE “IRISH PROTESTANT PLAYWRIGHTS” CONFERENCE

1-3 JUNE 2016

Moore Institute, NUI Galway, IRELAND

Featuring:

-Keynote addresses by Prof. SeÌÁn Kennedy (St. Mary’s University, Halifax) and Dr. Emilie Pine (University College Dublin)

-Panel papers and roundtable discussions on the great Irish Protestant playwrights, including (among others) George Farquhar, Oliver Goldsmith, R.B. Sheridan, Elizabeth Griffith, Dion Boucicault, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, J.M. Synge, Lady Augusta Gregory, W.B. Yeats, SeÌÁn O’Casey, Denis Johnston, Mary Manning, Samuel Beckett, Stewart Parker, and Christina Reid

-Performances of the plays Grania by Lady Gregory and Purgatory by W.B. Yeats

A remarkable number of Ireland’s great playwrights have hailed from Protestant backgrounds, despite the fact that Catholics have always comprised a much greater proportion of the Irish population. There are, of course, two primary reasons for this. First, since conventional plays were not written in the Irish language until the late nineteenth century, Irish Gaelic Catholics were, for a long time, without a dramatic tradition to plug into (by contrast, Irish Protestants often felt a strong cultural tie to the English dramatic tradition). Second, Irish Protestants had, for centuries, much greater access to formal education and to the theatre worlds of Dublin and London than Catholics did, due to the Penal Laws and other repressive, anti-Catholic measures.

While these factors may explain Protestant dominance in Irish drama prior to Catholic Emancipation and the widespread adoption of the English language in the early-to-mid-nineteenth century, it is a curious fact that, since that time, a significant number of Ireland’s great playwrights have continued to come from the island’s relatively small Protestant communities. What is perhaps even more curious is that critics have often failed to spot the degree to which the works by these playwrights betray the influence of the beliefs and social values/anxieties associated with their Protestant backgrounds. Indeed, in Inventing Ireland (1995), Declan Kiberd rightly points out that, while critics of Irish literature have readily recognised the importance of Roman Catholicism to the work of lapsed Catholics like James Joyce, they have frequently ignored or underestimated the importance of the specifically Protestant preoccupations found in works by “lapsed Protestants” like Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, SeÌÁn O’Casey, and Samuel Beckett.

In the years since Kiberd made that observation, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate the ways in which the great Irish Protestant dramatists were shaped by their Protestant upbringings. This conference aims to bring many of these exciting, new scholars together to share and discuss their groundbreaking work. At the conference, their remit will, of course, involve illuminating the Protestant aspects of the classic works they discuss, but they will also demonstrate – by examining a wide variety of writers, including frequently neglected women playwrights – the heterogeneity of Irish Protestantism. (There are, after all, marked cultural and social differences between the various Protestant communities in Ireland; one need only think of the repeatedly rude remarks that Irish Anglicans like Jonathan Swift, Lady Morgan, and Bernard Shaw made about Ulster Scots Presbyterians.) Finally, these scholars will try to understand why Irish Protestants have been so successful at writing plays; is there something about drama and performance that particularly appeals to the Irish Protestant psyche?

To register for this conference – or to obtain more information about it – please write to Dr. David Clare (david.clare@nuigalway.ie) or Dr. Feargal Whelan (feargal.whelan@gmail.com). The conference is free of charge but space is limited, so advance registration is required. For more information, please visit https://protestantplaywrights.wordpress.com.

FINAL PROGRAMME

All events held in Room G010, Moore Institute, Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway (except where indicated).WED., 1 JUNE 2016

2-3.15pm / Registration

3.15pm-3.30pm / Welcome and Opening Remarks

3.30pm-5pm / PANEL ONE: EARLY IRISH DRAMA IChair: Feargal Whelan (UCD)

-James Ward (University of Ulster) – “Remembering Farquhar”-Heather Ladd (University of Lethbridge) – “The Outsider as Cultural Critic: Arthur Murphy’s News From Parnassus“

-David Clare (NUI Galway) – “Reflections on Catholic Ireland in the Plays of Elizabeth Griffith and Maria Edgeworth”5pm-6pm / PLENARY ADDRESS

SeÌÁn Kennedy (St. Mary’s University) – “Beckett and the Specters of Irish Modernism”

6pm-7pm / Wine Reception

7.30pm-8.30pm / PERFORMANCE

Full Production of Lady Gregory’s Grania at the Bank of Ireland Theatre, NUI Galway (Part of the “Waking the Feminists West” Initiative)

Directed by Justine Nakase

Lighting Design by Nelson Barre

Set Design by Chris McCormack

CAST:

GRANIA – Hannah Carleton

FINN – Sam ÌÒ Fearraigh

DIARMUID – Cillian Browne

CHORUS – Sarah Vargo and Grainne O’Reilly

Thurs., 2 JUNE 2016

9am-9.30am / Registration

9.30am-11am / PANEL TWO: EARLY IRISH DRAMA IIChair: Rebecca Barr (NUI Galway)

-David Clare (NUI Galway), Feargal Whelan (University College Dublin), and Des Lally (NUI Galway) – “Oliver Goldsmith’s The Good-Natured Man at the Gate Theatre, Dublin 1974″-Conrad Brunstr̦m (Maynooth University) – “Family Rivals: Thomas, Frances, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan – the co-creation of an eighteenth-century classic”-Deirdre McFeely (Trinity College Dublin) – “Dion Boucicault: a Dublin Huguenot”11am-11.30am / Coffee and Tea Break

11.30am-1pm / PANEL THREE: WILDE AND SHAWChair: David Clare (NUI Galway)

-Graham Price (University of Limerick) – “Wilde and Hegel: Irish Peacock and Protestant Aquinas”-Audrey McNamara (University College Dublin) – “Bernard Shaw: Puritan or The Devil’s Disciple?”-Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel (Massachusetts Maritime Academy) – “Bernard Shaw the Journalist: Saving the Free Press 1914-1916”1pm-2pm / Lunch Break

2pm-3pm / ROUNDTABLE: “Bernard Shaw and His Irish Contemporaries”

Chair: Ian Walsh (NUIG)

Panellists: Audrey McNamara (UCD), Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel (MMA), David Clare (NUIG)

3pm-4.40pm / PANEL FOUR: DIRECTORS OF THE EARLY ABBEYChair: Thomas Conway

-Anna Pilz (University College Cork) – “‰Û÷Dirty James’: Religion and the Politics of Representation in Gregory’s The White Cockade“-Catherine Wilsdon (University College Dublin) – “Synge, Paris, and Progressive Protestantism”-Adrian Paterson (NUI Galway) – “‰Û÷The dry bones of the dead’: Yeats and The Dreaming of the Bones“

-Derek Hand (St. Patrick’s College, Dublin City University) – “The Purgatory of W. B. Yeats”4.40am-5pm / Coffee and Tea Break

5pm-6pm

Rehearsed Reading of W. B. Yeats’s Purgatory

Directed by David Clare

CAST:

OLD MAN – Ian Walsh

BOY – Dylan McCormack

FRI., 3 JUNE 2016

9am-9.30am / Registration

9.30am-11am / PANEL FIVE: “STRAY REVELLERS FROM THE REVIVAL”Chair: Charlotte McIvor (NUI Galway)

-Des Lally (NUI Galway) – “Lord Dunsany: The Wisdom of Bog Watchers” -Ian Walsh (NUI Galway) – “A Vaudeville of Frustration: Jack B. Yeats’s La La Noo“

-SiobhÌÁn Purcell (NUI Galway) – “The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away: Disability and Sacrifice in O’Casey’s Plays”11am-11.30am / Coffee and Tea Break

11.30am-1pm / PANEL SIX: EARLY GATE PLAYWRIGHTS

Chair: Des Lally(NUI Galway)-Feargal Whelan (University College Dublin) – “The Boys say ‰Û÷Yes’!: Denis Johnston, The Gate and National Mythmaking in the 1930s”-Ciara Conway (NUI Galway) – “‰Û÷Let’s be Dublin’: The Work of Understudy, Actress and Playwright Mary Manning”-Ruud van den Beuken (Radboud University) – “‰Û÷How can you call it a nation?’: The Ascendancy and the Free State in Christine Longford’s Mr. Jiggins of Jigginstown (1933)”1pm-2pm / Lunch Break

2pm-3pm / ROUNDTABLE: “Samuel Beckett and the ‰Û÷State’ of Ireland (Revisited)”

Chair: Feargal Whelan (UCD)

Panellists: Alan Graham (UCD), Scott Eric Hamilton (UCD), SeÌÁn Kennedy (St. Mary’s), SiobhÌÁn Purcell (NUIG)

3pm-3.20pm / Tea and Coffee Break

3.20pm-5pm / PANEL SEVEN: GODOT AND AFTERChair: ClÌ_odhna Carney (NUI Galway)

-Thomas Conway (NUI Galway) – “‰Û÷I’m a dirty, low church P’: Illuminating the Revisions to Waiting for Godot (1975) by Means of the Beckett/McGreevy Correspondence (1932-35)”

-Barry Houlihan (NUI Galway) – “The Numbers Game: Protestants on Stage at the Abbey and Lyric Theatres in Jack White’s The Last Eleven“-Megan Minogue (Independent Scholar) – “Alternative Ulster: The Musicality of Stewart Parker’s ‰Û÷Working Models of Wholeness'”

-MÌÁria Kurdi (University of P̩cs) – “‰Û÷I really do exist’: the Individual in the Monologue Theatre of Jennifer Johnston”

5pm-6pm / PLENARY ADDRESS

Emilie Pine (University College Dublin) – “Memory Generations: The Work of Remembering in the Plays of Christina Reid”