Anthology gives a voice to eclipsed playwrights

When Shakespeare’s Othello can make it onto a programme drawn by our National Theatre to commemorate 1916 while Ireland’s female playwrights are largely ignored, it begs the question: ‘What is wrong with Irish theatre?’

That question has been to the fore in recent days, since the Abbey Theatre’s Artistic Director Fiach Mac Conghail announced its programme, Waking the Nation 2016, to mark 1916.

Waking The Nation includes three world premières alongside new interpretations of what The Abbey regards as some of the best plays produced by the theatre over the past century. Of the ten plays on the programme, only one was written by a woman – Ali White’s monologue for children.

The editors of the recently published anthology Irish Women Dramatists 1908 – 2001, Eileen Kearney and Charlotte Headrick would not be a bit surprised at this latest development.

Their book, published by New York’s Syracuse University Press, offers an insight into the lives and work of seven Irish women playwrights, who “have struggled in getting the recognition and audiences of their male counterparts”. The list of seven is not intended to be exhaustive, but it highlights women of talent including Patricia Deevy, Dolores Walshe and Galway’s Patricia Burke Brogan, alongside Jennifer Johnston, Anne Le Marquand Hartigan, Nicola McCarthy and Lady Gregory.

In their introduction to the book, the two American academics point out that “a brief excursion into the Abbey Theatre archives reveals how few women playwrights have been produced there over the last century”. When plays by women did get an Abbey outing, “the majority were staged in its smaller venue, the Peacock”.

Kearney’s and Headrick’s criticism extends to a Galway institution too.

“Even the Druid, under the direction of the Tony-Award-winning Garry Hynes, has a lamentable record supporting women playwrights, with the exception of Marina Carr.”

They point to companies such as Charabanc, Replay and Storytellers, Gallow Glass which have championed the work of women, and they acknowledge the work of Rough Magic and its artistic director, Lynne Parker, in supporting women writers.

“From Gina Moxley and Pam Boyd to Paula Meehan, Elizabeth Kuti and Morna Regan, Parker and Rough Magic have championed women playwrights. Additionally, Parker has encouraged other women directors to produce new productions of plays first championed by Rough Magic.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.