International Women Stage Directors

Ireland

Ireland Karin Maresh Women have been directing for the stage in Ireland since the early twentieth century. They have found work and achieved critical and popular success in spite of the sometimes-volatile political situation and the conservative religious and social forces that have historically limited women’s rights in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Women’s Rights: Historical Context Although some in Ireland began to talk of a need for more equality between men and women by the early 1800s, no actual organized women’s movement existed until the 1870s. The establishment of groups such as the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association coincided with a rising tide of nationalist and labor movements. In fact, the Irish struggle for independence from the United Kingdom throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries influenced and affected all areas of Irish life, including women’s rights and the development of a native theatre tradition in Ireland that from its beginnings involved women playwrights, actors, and directors. Unfortunately, struggle for independence strained the women’s movement, forcing female and male participants to choose between fighting for freedom for their nation and fighting for women’s rights. Finally, in 1918 women in the United Kingdom and Ireland of age thirty or older were granted the right to vote, and in 1922 the new Irish Free State, made up of twenty-six of Ireland’s southern counties, granted suffrage to all adults older than twenty-one. Following independence Ireland became a very conservative country with a government strongly influenced by the Catholic Church. For Irish women this meant living in a society that upheld the nineteenth-century Victorian ideals of a woman’s role being solely that of wife and mother, as well as legislation that effectively barred women from serving on juries or maintaining employment in certain professions, like the Civil Service, after marriage. To this day the Irish constitution, adopted in 1937, contains two articles that articulate the Irish woman’s support for the state by her work within the home. By the early 1970s Ireland’s desire to join the European Economic Community, as well as a burgeoning feminist movement in Ireland, led to changes in the Irish woman’s status. In 1971 the Irish government set up a Commission on the Status of Women, which subsequently issued a report that made more than fifty recommendations and suggestions to eliminate gender discrimination in all public areas of Irish society. New legislation throughout the 1970s made it illegal for women to be barred from working after marriage and made it possible for married couples to obtain prescriptions for contraceptives. A conservative backlash in the early 1980s led to a constitutional ban on abortion, but progress continued, resulting in the legalization of divorce in 1995. In the twenty-first century women in Ireland enjoy more parity with men in the workforce than they did in past decades, and two women, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, served (in succession) as president of Ireland from 1990 to 2011. However, women are still vastly underrepresented in the Irish parliament and senate, and as of 2007 their incomes on average were 87 percent of their male counterparts’ incomes (Central Statistics Office 26). Early Women Directors Theatre in Ireland existed primarily as a British import prior to the final decade of the nineteenth century, when nationalist organizations began producing theatre for political and literary purposes. Many women took part as performers in these amateur productions, but it was not until the founding in 1904 of the first resident professional theatre in Dublin, which became known as the Abbey Theatre, that a few women began working as professional directors. The playwright Lady Augusta Gregory, one of the co-founders of the Abbey, Ireland’s National Theatre, directed several productions there early in the decade beginning in 1910 in addition to essentially running the theatre’s daily operations during that time. Much as the new Irish Free State sought to limit the presence of women in public life, professional theatres in Ireland provided Irish women few directing or playwriting opportunities. Beginning with the 1940s, some women founded theatre companies , often in collaboration with a male colleague. During this time much of their responsibility involved management of the theatres—hiring of actors, helping with play selection, and the like—rather than directing productions. Two notable excep188 Karin Maresh tions are Mary O’Malley, founder of...