Sep 9, 2022

Theatre and Archival Memory

Irish Drama and Marginalised Histories 1951-1977

Barry Houlihan

Hosted by Bridget English

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Summary

Drawing on newly released and digitized archival records, Houlihan’s Theatre and Archival Memory: Irish Drama and Marginalised Histories 1951-1977 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) examines a pivotal period of social and cultural change in the history of Irish theatre, offering unique insights into the production and reception of Irish drama, its internationalization and political influences. From the 1950s onwards, Irish theatre engaged audiences within new theatrical forms at venues from the Pike Theatre, the Project Arts Centre, and the Gate Theatre, as well as at Ireland’s national theatre, the Abbey.

Incorporating the work of overlooked female playwrights like Edna O’Brien, Mary Manning, Carolyn Swift, and Mairead Ni Ghrada, this book argues for an inclusive historiography reflective of the formative impacts of marginalized performance histories upon modern Irish theatre. This study examines these works' experimental dramaturgical impacts in terms of production, reception, and archival legacies. Theatre and Archival Memory is framed by the device of ‘archival memory’ and serves as a means for scholars and theatre-makers to inter-contextualize existing historiography and to challenge canon formation. It also presents a new social history of Irish theatre told from the fringes of history and reanimated through archival memory.

Bridget English is a scholar of Irish literature and culture, modernism, and health humanities, based at the University of Illinois Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Seminar at the Newberry Library and is the Literature Representative for the American Conference for Irish Studies. On Twitter.

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Bridget English

Brigid Wallace is a graduate student at Lehigh University. A historian of the French Atlantic world, my research explores how race, migration, revolution, and science shaped the lives of ordinary people during the Age of Revolutions. Her work traces the movement of people, plants, and ideas across the Atlantic, focusing on mixed-race families who fled Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution and rebuilt their lives in Charleston, South Carolina. Her master's thesis, "Preservation of a Family: The Noisettes' Journey from Saint-Domingue to Charleston, 1794–1860," examines how one family navigated the political upheavals of the French, Haitian, and American Revolutions while preserving kinship networks across shifting racial and national boundaries. Through the story of the Noisette family, I investigate how migration transformed identities and how refugees carried not only memories and traditions but also scientific knowledge. Her work demonstrates that the history of revolution is not only a story of politics and war but also one of families, mobility, and the exchange of knowledge that reshaped the modern Atlantic world.

"You may encounter many obstacles, but you must not be defeated!" Maya Angelou

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