Performing the Body in Irish Theatre

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction: A ‘Sense of the Body’

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 1-7

3. The Absent Body? Performing Tradition

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 8-49

4. The Inanimate Body: The Great Hunger

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 50-77

5. The Savage Body: The Saxon Shore

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 78-110

6. The Dancing Body: Dancing at Lughnasa

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 111-137

7. The Troubled Body: At the Black Pig’s Dyke

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 138-167

8. The Indeterminate Body: Low in the Dark

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 168-193

9. The Present Body? Evolving Tradition

   • Bernadette Sweeney

   Pages 194-217

10. Back Matter

    Pages 218-241

    PDF

This title examines the representation of the body in Irish theatre alongside the specific circumstances within which Irish theatre is performed, incorporating issues of gender and embodiment, and the performance of Irishness and tradition. The author contextualizes the body in Irish theatre, and includes in-depth analysis of five key productions.

• bibliography
• body
• corpus
• dancing
• gender
• knowledge
• performance
• present
• theatre
• tradition

'This book is at the forefront of the emerging field of Irish Performance Studies. While Sweeney offers original readings of some well known and several lesser known texts (such as Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa , Tom MacIntyre's The Great Hunger , David Rudkin's The Saxon Shore and Marina Carr's Low in the Dark ), she emphasizes the complex interweaving of text and performance in the emergence of new Irish theatre practices. She combines detailed analysis of texts and productions with a broad framework of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish theatre. Performing the Body in Irish Theatre re-visions Irish theatre history in its insistence on theatre as an embodied practice, whether in the work of W.B. Yeats or in the choreography of Michael Keegan Dolan.' - Anna McMullan, Chair in Drama, Queen's University Belfast, UK

BERNADETTE SWEENEY lectures in Drama and Theatre Studies at University College Cork, Republic of Ireland. She is a graduate of the School of Drama, Trinity College Dublin, where she completed her doctoral research and taught theatre practice. She has also worked as an actor and director; recent productions include Machinal by Sophie Treadwell and Synge's Riders to the Sea.

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