About the Synge Summer School

The Synge Summer School was established in 1990 by Professor Nicholas Grene. It meets in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow each year, offering participants the chance to enjoy lectures and seminars on Synge and Irish drama in one of Ireland’s most beautiful counties.

 

The school is open to all, welcoming academics, teachers, students, researchers, theatre practitioners (amateur and professional), and theatre enthusiasts of all kinds. Every year, participants travel to the school from all parts of Ireland, and indeed from many countries throughout the world.

 

While there is a full academic programme, involving a series of seminars, lectures and an optional drama workshop, there is also a lively social programme, which includes a tour of Wicklow, a trip to the Abbey Theatre, and many other events.

 

The current Director of the School is Patrick Lonergan (National University of Ireland, Galway). Past directors of the School include Nicholas Grene (Trinity College Dublin), Adrian Frazier (NUI Galway) and Anthony Roche (University College Dublin).

 

Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize Winning Poet, Writes:

In the past, great benefit has flowed from this annual gathering which brings together so many interested parties in a single creative endeavour. Every year, the enduring link of one of the world’s great dramatists with his Wicklow region is celebrated with proper style and confidence. Scholars and critics of Synge’s work and of Irish theatre attend the event; the local community commits itself to it, local pride is fortified by it and local culture showcased. The great natural beauty of Rathdrum and district makes an ideal setting, and the many sites of literary and historical interest in the area give this particular summer school a special appeal for visitors. And not just for visitors: people on the ground come alive to the advantages of their native place. From my own participation in different years, I can attest to the vitality of the proceedings, both intellectual and social. Hard work goes into the organizing, but participants give as good as they get. Not only is the good standing of Wicklow’s playwright ratified, but the good name of his county and its people is enhanced. It’s encouraging to know that a new start is being made on this admirable work.

 

Interpreting Synge

In 2000, a collection of essays from the Synge Summer School, 1991-2000, was published. Entitled Interpreting Synge, the book was edited by Nicholas Grene, and is published by Lilliput Press (ISBN 1 901866 47 5)

 

CONTENTS

• Nicholas Grene, 'On the margins: Synge and Wicklow'
• R.F. Foster, 'Good behaviour: Yeats, Synge and Anglo-Irish etiquette'
• Frank Mc Guinness, 'John Millington Synge and the King of Norway'
• Angela Bourke, 'Keening as theatre'
• Tom Paulin, 'Riders to the Sea: a revisionist tragedy'
• Antoinette Quinn, 'Staging the Irish peasant woman: Maud Gonne v. Synge'
• Christopher Morash, 'All playboys now: the audience and the riot'
• Martin Hilsky, 'Re-imagining Synge's language: the Czech experience'
• Declan Kiberd, 'The making and unmaking of myth: Synge as anthropologist'
• Anthony Roche, 'Synge: the woman and the tramp'
• Ann Saddlemyer, 'Synge's soundscape'