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16 3 13 “The Irish Play” Beyond the Generic? c h r i s t i n a h u n t m a h o n y The title of this essay is not intended to indicate an Irish take on MacBeth; rather, its intention is conveyed by the subtitle. My approach is not scholarly, but speculative, an informal intervention into an ongoing debate about what “the Irish Play” is, and what it means to audiences outside of Ireland. It is a subject admirably and convincingly addressed by Nicholas Grene in the final chapter of his book The Politics of Irish Drama, to take one fine example, and also by Anthony Roche in the recently published two-volume Cambridge History of Irish Literature.1 The immediate impetus to explore this subject, however, came in the form of two essays written by Fintan O’Toole, both of which appeared in the Irish Times—one after The Dublin Theater Festival of 2005, and the other in the annual year-end arts roundup at Christmas of that year.2 O’Toole, long a proponent of the literary play and an advocate for the essential role of the playwright in the collaborative art of theater, is, at the same time, a critic interested in and open to a full range of theatrical undertakings and experiments of many kinds. In his October essay O’Toole wrote: Is the era of the playwright as the dominant figure in the theatre coming to a close? . . . This is a big issue for Irish theatre, especially in terms of its international standing. What we can claim (as opposed to great companies or actors or directors in large numbers) is an extraordinary contribution to the play as a literary form. . . . [We have] the abiding self-image of our 164 | c h r i s t i n a h u n t m a h o n y theatrical culture as one in which the writer matters. . . . But does the writer—in the old sense of the solitary genius who labours in isolation on a text that is then interpreted by actors, directors and designers—[does that writer] really matter any more?3 O’Toole’s questioning of the continuing primacy of the playwright, and the validity of that primacy in the twenty-first century, was precipitated by his rather stunned realization that the Theater Festival had not included even one new Irish play written by a single author. He went on to list the differing types of creative undertakings, collaborations, imports, and partnerships that predominated instead. The productions included plays written collectively , plays co-authored by directors and companies, verbatim theater, and other formats. O’Toole may be right, but I must also suggest that audiences for Irish plays outside Ireland seem always to have been not devoted fans of “the Playwright” but much more devoted to the concept of “the Irish Play” or what they have come to think of as “the Irish Play.” It could be argued that this generic Irish Play is, in a sense, the single-authored play of which O’Toole writes, but more specifically it is a language and/or a story-telling play. Furthermore, the average overseas playgoer’s concept of “the Irish Play” includes some stereotypical or démodé elements that Irish writers, actors, and directors now try to avoid or minimize, or in which they are no longer particularly interested. Reception of Irish plays abroad varies greatly from country to country, and this assessment is based solely on an American response, accumulated during more than two decades. The sampling is not scientific, nor is it probably extensive enough, and is based on informal canvassing of both student audiences and general audiences. Reference to the student audience is excluded because it is atypical and does not inform the wider and relevant assessment of reception, marketing, advertising, or other commercial theatrical realities. American theater audiences for Irish plays, in my context here, can be broken down into four types: the Theater Goer; the Irish American; the Big Nite Out-er; and the Socialite. Sometimes these categories can overlap , but not to a degree significant enough to dispense with the categories. The Theater Goer is just that, and in a New York audience he or she is immediately recognizable, but the type is not found throughout the country at large by any means. There is also a provincial “Theater Goer” found [3.138.101.95] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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