Knowing Their Place: The Ulster Lyric Theatre, the Lyric Theatre, and the Northern Irish Theatre Scene

{ 202 } \ Knowing Their Place The Ulster Lyric Theatre, the Lyric Theatre, and the Northern Irish Theatre Scene —Roy Connolly Despite its recent centenary (1904–2004), the Ulster Literary Theatre (ULT)— and Northern Irish theatre more generally—remains relatively neglected by theatre criticism. This article seeks to go some way toward redressing this neglect by examining the points of contact and conflict between the project of the ULT and its latter-­ day counterparts the Ulster Group Theatre (1939–72), the Arts Theatre (1947–), and the Lyric Theatre (1951–). At the center of this inquiry is the issue of how ideology and material circumstance compete with or elaborate one another to produce each theatre’s sense of “place” and the implications of this for each theatre’s developing cultural identity. In addressing this issue, I argue that while the idea of place (and the tension between material and imagined versions of this idea) has been central to the public declarations of Irish theatre institutions, their activities, the positions they occupy in the public imagination and, ultimately, their economic fates, the type of theatre this has generated has nevertheless had very little to do with social reality. Instead, for the main part, the theatre has been cast as a forum for the production of exemplary versions of locality and imagined public interests, an innate cultural conservatism, among Irish nationalist, Ulster unionist (those who wish for continued union with the British state), and middle-­ ground political organizations alike conspiring to produce limited enthusiasm for the exploration of community concerns, or the meaning of “place” in human terms. While such an attitude toward the theatre might appear understandable, and even valid, given the politically contested nature of the Northern Irish state, this use of the { 203 } the Northern Irish Theatre Scene theatre has, nevertheless, had the effect of reinforcing rather than ameliorating local divisions. Furthermore, this attitude, and the regard it has produced for measuring local cultural activity against external standards, has been at the root of the lack of critical regard for the Northern Irish theatre tradition. Addressing these tendencies, this article seeks to align with recent rereadings of Ireland that seek to interrogate traditional “adoring eye” representations of the country.1 Furthermore, I hope to indicate that in the histories of theatres such as the ULT, the Ulster Group Theatre, the Arts Theatre, and the Lyric there exist fascinating micro-­ narratives that, among other things, usefully inform our understanding of how“ideal”representations are legitimized and achieve dominance over more socially anchored, or “down to earth,” representations of the world. The Ulster Literary Theatre The first recorded instance of professional theatre in Northern Ireland was in 1736 when the Dublin-­ based Smock Alley Troupe presented a summer season in Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast.2 Companies continued to visit Belfast throughout the eighteenth century, and in 1793 the region’s first theatre—the Royal on Arthur Street—was built to house these touring productions.3 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, nothing emerges that might be described as a Northern Irish theatre tradition (i.e., a theatre created for Northern Irish audiences about local concerns). Northern Ireland’s theatre, instead , like that of the rest of Irish theatre, generally toured out of London,4 and this remained the case until 1899, when W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Edward Martyn formed the Irish Literary Theatre (ILT—the forerunner of Abbey Theatre ) in Dublin. Three years later, a Belfast group led by Bulmer Hobson and W. B. Reynolds inaugurated an Ulster branch of the ILT, the first of two initiatives they established in 1902 to promote Irish nationalism.5 The ILT’s interest in drama was based on a confluence of political and artistic ambitions, and similarly the group in Belfast saw the theatre as a forum where its political concerns could be expressed. Indeed, the direct forerunner of what came to be referred to as the Ulster Literary Theatre was the Protestant National Association, a“group committed to spreading the ideas and principles of Wolfe Tone and his political party the United Irishmen,”6 which, having met with only moderate success in its political incarnation, now turned to “drama as a vehicle...