"A Note on What Happened": Experimental Influences on the Irish Stage: 1919-1929

• Main Author: Sisson, Elaine
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: Dublin Drama League; Gate Theatre; Irish counterculture; modernist drama; Peacock Theatre; theatre of experiment
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss15/7; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1189/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n15_2010_5D_203.5_ForumKritika_Sisson.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This essay proposes that stage design offers a means of establishing visual links to an aesthetically radical European modernism which was being explored by a post-Revolutionary generation of Irish artists and writers. Existing histories and critical studies of Irish theatre privilege literary approaches and consequently a rich seam of contextual visual material and information has been neglected. Given theatre’s important cultural role in shaping questions of national identity, “A Note on What Happened” argues that the study of theatre as spectacle is crucial to an understanding of how contemporary Irish audiences were introduced to avant-garde ideas.