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The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the turbulent changes within the Irish society affected the face of modern Irish drama. Ireland, originally a rural country bound by religious dogmas and its own colonial past, underwent a considerable amount of development in the latter half of the 20th century; it was predominantly manifested through an increased Celtic Tiger economic prosperity and decreasing influence of the Catholic Church. The central interest of Irish culture has always been the effort to define a unifying national metanarrative and identity. In the beginning of the 20th century this desire was motivated by a struggle to establish a vital opposition between Ireland and Great Britain and definitely renounce its depreciating status of a former colony. However, in the second half of the 20th century the discrepancy between the nationalist ideology driven idea of Irish identity (whose value has always been questionable to say the least) and its modern reality became unbridgeable. The introduction of this thesis is dedicated to summarizing the changes within the Irish society in the course of the 20th century. A brief characterization of this turbulent development should justify the urge of more recent artists to re-formulate the Irish national metanarrative to suit the 20th century...

Thesis Abstract The aim of this thesis is to compare the production history and reception of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, arguably one of his most famous and successful plays, in Irish and Czech contexts. Following its triumphant premiere at the Abbey Theatre in 1990 directed by Patrick Mason, the production transferred to London and Broadway, where it garnered further critical acclaim and several prestigious awards. The first Czech production, directed by Jan Burian, opened at Divadlo na Vinohradech in Prague in 1993, and over the course of the next twenty years it was staged another eight times on Czech professional - mostly regional stages. The opening chapter of the thesis focuses on the analysis of Dancing at Lughnasa using the method of close reading, as well as consulting secondary literature. The following chapter is divided into two parts, the first of them attempting to outline the background of the play by focusing on the events of the 1930s in Ireland. The second part is concerned with the context of writing Dancing at Lughnasa. Chapters four and five comprise the main body of the thesis and deal with the description of the five most significant productions in Ireland and the Czech Republic. These chapters focus on the context, the directors' concept, the acting and the critical acclaim....

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis centers on a country that has produced some of the greatest and most important English language dramas of the past two centuries. Within this cultural context, this thesis is also about a feminine revival in Irish theatre and how this can be a powerful tool to incite change. Early in history, Irish writers, and specifically dramatists, recreated a type of theatre that captured the true essence of what it meant to be Irish by representing their struggles, frustrations and humor. The Irish talent for storytelling connects back to its Gaelic roots and has remained a constant in the life of a culture that has passed down this art form for centuries. The focus of this thesis is to examine three contemporary Irish plays by prominent playwrights who came to the world of theatre from very different backgrounds. Each play is written by a different hand, yet all share a vital common denominator: the interaction of female character groups – groups that are central to the action of each play. What incited my interest in these three plays – Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, Anne Devlin’s Ourselves Alone and Marina Carr’s The Mai – was the playwright’s ability to expose what had been silenced in Irish history for so long. Each female character portrays one important aspect of Irish womanhood that has been tragically understated in the nation’s literature since the death of John Millington Synge: woman’s struggle between what she wants to be and who she is expected to be. These three plays will be scrutinized in terms of three elements of social control contributing to woman’s struggle in Irish society: myth, church and patriarchal tradition.