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WELCOME TO THE 2011 Synge Summer School

30 June to 3 July

Short Description of Papers with Recommended Reading

Provided below is a brief outline of the papers at this year’s Synge Summer School. In each case, we provide some suggested readings. It’s not essential to read all of these in advance (though you are welcome to do so).

Chris Morash, “Space in Irish Theatre”

One of the basic elements of theatre is space. A play in performance exists in space, and, in some senses, it produces space. Indeed, it could even be said that our sense of space – our fundamental sense of where we are in the world – is, at least partially, the produced in the theatre. In the early twentieth century, the works of John Millington Synge were, arguably, among the most influential in creating an Irish sense of space. This lecture will look at space in Synge’s plays in their time, and in ours.

Suggested reading: J.M. Synge, Riders to the Sea, In the Shadow of the Glen; also, for the curious: Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place (1977).

Patrick Lonergan, Irish Theatre in Times of Crisis

Since the emergence of Ireland’s financial crisis in 2008, particular strain has been placed on the need to ‘perform the nation’ before global markets and investors. The actions of politicians, pundits, sportspeople, and artists have all been construed as performances that either boost or undermine the credibility of Ireland’s economic sovereignty. In a way, then, almost every feature of Irish culture has become a form of national theatre – whether it’s an Irish theatre company appearing on Broadway, our prime minister being lampooned for being a ‘drunken moron’ on the Jay Leno show, or our national football team being cheated out of a place at the 2010 World Cup. I want to consider how Irish theatre-makers are reacting to the demand to ‘perform Ireland’ for economic reasons. I’ll consider some recent Irish plays, will place contemporary events in an historical context, and hope to sketch some possible ways forward.

Suggested reading: I will briefly discuss Michael West’s Freefall, Dermot Bolger’s The Parting Glass, and Una McKevitt’s Victor and Gord during the talk, but it’s not necessary to have read or seen those plays.

All Over Again: New Beginnings in Irish Theatre

Cathy Leeney

Irish theatre has created defining elements of national collective memory, images of personal and social agency, of power and powerlessness that, in this current period of moral instability, are ripe for questioning and re-assessment. As theatre audiences view images of the imagined real, how has canon formation edited those visions? This presentation will look at selected plays, some yet to be admitted to the canon, to see how they might ground potential for different understandings, actions and expectations on the part of audiences. Implicit in the voyeuristic role of the audience is the issue of how to regard the tragedies of the past. How might theatre be a contemplative space in which pain and disadvantage are re-performed or transformed?

Works by 1930s playwright Teresa Deevy will be amongst those central to the discussion. In direct relationship with the national mood, Irish theatre sets out to begin again, is always beginning again.

Suggested Reading

Deevy Teresa, Temporal Powers, Journal of Irish Literature, 14 (1985), 18-75
Deevy, Teresa, A Disciple or In Search of Valour, Dublin Magazine, 12(1) (1937), 29-47.

(please email Patrick.lonergan@nuigalway.ie if you cannot access these plays in advance)

Emer O’Toole, Intercultural Playboys: Contemporary Conflicts

‘All art is collaboration,’ says Synge. His collaborators were the culturally Other people of Ireland’s Gaeltacht regions. The Playboy of the Western World, therefore, has always been intercultural. The points of contention arising from its present day intercultural reimaginings are as intricately tied to the political and socio-economic concerns of our time as the 1907 Abbey ‘riots’ were to Synge’s. My paper analyses Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s updating of The Playboy, looking at conflicts created by branding and reception of the production. It also discusses Pan Pan Theatre Company’s Mandarin Chinese modernisation of Synge’s classic, focusing on intercultural tensions arising from the translation process.

Suggested readings (please contact Patrick.lonergan@nuigalway.ie if you can’t locate this material)

· Adigun, Bisi. “Arambe Productions: An African’s Response to the Recent Portrayal of the Fear Gorm in Irish Drama.” Performing Global Networks. Ed. Karen Fricker and Ronit Lentin. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007. 52-65.

· Bharucha, Rustom, “A Reply to Richard Schechner.” Asian Theatre Journal 1.2 (1984): 254-60.

· Roddy Doyle. ‘Foreword.’ The Deportees. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007.

· Schechner, Richard. “A Reply to Rustom Bharucha.” Asian Theatre Journal 1.2 (1984): 245-53.

Aisling Mullan, 'Synge's Mediation of Scripture and Primitive Custom in The Shadow of the Glen.'

This paper examines the religious connotations of The Shadow of the Glen in the context of Synge’s crisis of theistic belief, his training in Celtology, and the response of the Synge family household to Irish politics. The Shadow of the Glen is here considered a rite of passage for the nation in which Synge offers a methodology for harmonizing sectarian division in Ireland whilst maintaining vital connection with past traditions and generating a viable (though non-obligatory) model of religious belief that might contravene twentieth century advances in scientific knowledge.

Recommended reading: Synge. The Shadow of the Glen

Christopher Collins, ‘“The Lord Protect Us From The Saints Of God!”: Saints, Sinners And Synge’”

In all of his plays, John Millington Synge questioned the religious orthodoxy of Roman Catholicism by dramatising the residue from pre-Christian Ireland. This paper interrogates the relationship between priests and pre-Christianity in The Well of the Saints (1905). The Freeman’s Journal chastised Synge for his presentation of ‘peasant religion’ in the play because his writing lacked ‘reverence and [was] expressed in a jargon of profane familiarity’ (6 February, 1905). But Synge was an anthropologist and not only could he predicate his play upon the pre-Christian sentiments of the Aran Islands, he could also draw upon ‘a scene [he] saw not long ago in Galway’. In Synge’s hands then, The Well of the Saints (and The Tinker’s Wedding for that matter) must not be seen as a romantic dramatisation of pre-Christian Ireland by an Anglo-Irish voyeur but rather, a dramatisation of a volatile and veracious subterranean culture that stalked the Catholic nation’s subconscious corridors. And when it appeared upon the national stage, as Synge found out, all hell was to pay.

Recommended Reading:

Roche, Anthony, “J.M. Synge: Christianity versus Paganism” in A J.M. Synge Literary Companion, ed. Edward A. Kopper, Jr. (London, New York and Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988).

Synge, J.M., The Well of the Saints and The Tinker’s Wedding

James Moran ‘Synge and Ezra Pound’

Between 1913 and 1916 Ezra Pound spent three winters with W.B. Yeats, secluded in Stone Cottage in Sussex. During this time, Pound attempted to emulate various Yeatsian enthusiasms and wrote the little-known play, The Consolations of Matrimony, under the pseudonym of ‘Oge Terrence O’Cullough’. My paper will examine the irreverent sketch of rural Irish life that Pound presents in this play, highlighting the way that Pound sought to follow Yeatsian Noh drama as well as the texts and performances of Synge’s earlier work.

Suggested Pre-Reading

Pound’s play is rather difficult to get hold of, so I will bring copies. In the meantime, it might be useful if the participants thought about (re)reading Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and The Tinker’s Wedding, as well as Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well. Participants may also find it useful to look at some of James Longenbach’s Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), especially its first chapter.

Fintan Walsh “Saving Ulster from Sodomy and Hysteria:

Sexual and Political Performances in Northern Ireland”

Homophobia is reported to be particularly rampant in Northern Ireland, ably encouraged by a culture of sectarianism and religious fundamentalism. These embedded prejudices were dramatically thrown into relief in 2008 when Iris Robinson – then DUP MP and MLA for Strangford – responded to the homophobic assault of a local man. Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan Show on June 6 of that year, the day after her husband Peter Robinson was elected First Minister, Robinson claimed that she believed homosexuality was an ‘abomination,’ and that it made her feel ‘sick’ and ‘nauseous,’ and offered to refer homosexuals to a psychiatrist she knew. While the DUP’s condemnatory stance on homosexuality has always been public, on this occasion heated debates, public protest, political and artistic responses followed.

This talk explores some of these recent events, tracing the connection between reactions to Robinson’s comments and the subsequent exposure of her money laundering and extra-martial affair the following year, which combined to pressure the Assembly to crisis point. Focusing on the construction of gender and sexuality within cultural performance in Northern Ireland, and interactions between a variety of theatre and performance practices, the essay discerns an intimate link between the performative life of the sodomite and the hysteric during this time, in a manner that reveals the centrality of gender and sexual power dynamics in the maintenance of social and political stability in the North.

Riana O’Dwyer 'That's how I spell IRELAND': Tom Murphy's drama from 1959 to 2009.

Tom Murphy has devoted all his life to the theatre and is recognised in Ireland and abroad as a master playwright and a leading figure of his generation. This is an opportunity to consider the range of his achievement over 50 years. What was the motive force that propelled him into the precarious life of the writer? What are the central issues that still preoccupy him? What have been the aspirations of his characters, and what price have they paid for their ambitions? What kind of Ireland emerges from his drama? A starting point is John Connor's assertion in Famine: 'I was born here, and I'll die here, and I'll rot here'. This paper will consider the consequences of such defiance and such endurance.

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