PDF The Belle of the Belfast City ; Did You Hear the One about the Irishman? Download
- Author: Christina Reid
- Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
- ISBN:
- Category : Drama
- Languages : en
- Pages : 104
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This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War. It explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.
A collection of plays by one of Ireland's finest dramatists of the 80s and 90s Tea in a China Cup focuses on the differing experiences of three generations of women in a working-class Belfast Protestant family, a tapestry of tales linked by the central character Beth, torn between the influence of traditions and the rejection of gentility and respectability. Did You Hear the One About the Irishman? shows how both nationalists and loyalists are dependent on one another; Joyriders, grew out of the work Reid did with residents at the notorious Davis Flats estate and is structured around the day-to-day activities of four Catholic teenagers on a youth training scheme running at a now-disused textile mill in Belfast and plays on the idea of Britain taking a joy-ride through Ireland; The Belle of Belfast city shows Dolly, a former music-hall star whose bawdy songs and unconventional antics conjure a magical Belfast far removed from that represented by her nephew Jack, a hardline loyalist politician. My Name, Shall I Tell You My name? is "Fierce, poignant...a formidable portrait of intransigent, archaic patriotism" (The Times) and Clowns (the sequel to Joyriders) is a "warmhearted, compassionate play". (The Guardian)
This work provides an overview of Irish theatre, read in the light of Ireland's self-definition. Mediating between history and its relations with politics and art, it attempts to do justice to the enabling and mirroring preoccupations of Irish drama.
From an analysis of the Guinness brand’s reflection of Irish identity to an exploration of murals and film portrayals of political prisoners, this pioneering collection of essays seeks to present Ireland’s relationship to visual culture as a whole. While other works have explored the imagistic history of Ireland, most have restricted their lens to a single form of visual representation. Ireland in Focus is the first book to address the diverse range of visual representations of national and communal identity in Ireland. The contributors examine the politics of visual representation from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Drawing from the areas of cultural theory, postcolonial studies, art criticism, documentary and archival history, and gender studies, the essays provide novel insights on a variety of visual-cultural forms, including film, theater, photography, landscape art, political murals, and the visual iconography of commercial marketing. Bringing together established scholars and emerging young critics in the field, Ireland in Focus breaks new ground in showcasing the essential dynamism of visual culture and its relationship to Irish studies
This Companion, first published in 2000, addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century. The chapters explore the historical and theatrical contexts in which women have written for the theatre and examine the work of individual playwrights. A chronological section on playwriting from the 1920s to the 1970s is followed by chapters which raise issues of nationality and identity. Later sections question accepted notions of the canon and include chapters on non-mainstream writing, including black and lesbian performance. Each section is introduced by the editors, who provide a narrative overview of a century of women's drama and a thorough chronology of playwriting, set in political context. The collection includes essays on the individual writers Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels, Pam Gems and Timberlake Wertenbaker as well as extensive documentation of contemporary playwriting in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including figures such as Liz Lochhead and Anne Devlin.
The women who appear in these pages are both well-known and unknown, real and invented. They include, for instance, the fiery Elizabeth Fitzgerald who defended her castle so successfully, and Granuaile, the pirate queen from Galway.