Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama

3 units

The course surveys Irish Drama from the early 20th century founding of the Abbey Theatre under William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory to selected contemporary playwrights. Yeats' claim that a new Irish drama would show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and easy sentiment... but the home of an ancient idealism was quickly put to the test when Synge's classic Playboy of the Western World occasioned riots during its 1907 performances. Issues have persisted: Celtic myth vs Dublin reality; celebration of warriors vs the aesthetics of loss and defeat; saintly Irish mothers vs pirate queens and Medeas; Anglo-Irish playwrights as embodiments of transition to the post-colonial. Playwrights will include Augusta Gregory, G.B. Shaw, Sean O'Casey, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Anne Devlin, Christina Reid, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, and Marina Carr.