Tag: irish times

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History

Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Homes

By National Library of Ireland on The Commons (Flickr: No. 9 to Donnybrook) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Karl O’Neill writes in the Irish Times of taking a walking tour of the six houses Sean O’Casey lived at in Dublin. The tour starts at 85 Dorset Street and covers an area of just under a square kilometer of Dublin before ending at 422 North Circular Road where Sean wrote the plays of his Dublin Trilogy.

Place is an important part of any life. While Sean’s plays are very much about people, those people are the product of a very particular environment. We can’t travel back in time but we can traverse the same spaces.

Categories
News

Abbey/Lyric Theatres’ Shadow Well Represented in the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards

Irish Times Clock
The Irish Times Clock | Flickr - Photo Sharing! : taken from - https://www.flickr.com/photos/dansapples/9563943531Author: Daniel Dudek-Corrigan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Congratulations to everyone involved in the recent production of Shadow of a Gunman co produced by the Abbey and Lyric Theatres. The production has received five nominations for Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards.

The nominees are,

  • Best Director, Wayne Jordan
  • Best Actor, Mark O’Halloran (Donal Davoren)
  • Best Supporting Actress, Amy McAllister (Minnie Powell)
  • Best Costume Design, Sarah Bacon
  • Best Set Design, Sarah Bacon

It is lovely to see this production recognised. The whole field of nominees is very strong pointing to a good year in dramatic arts. It is also good to see  the Waking The Feminists movement recognised in a  Judges’ special award for Lian Bell.

Categories
History

Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks Includes The Plough and the Stars

Sackville Street (Dublin) after the 1916 Easter Rising
Sackville (now O’Connell) Street, Dublin, after the 1916 Easter Rising
The Irish Times is running a series of articles looking at modern Ireland through artworks in various media. The Plough and the Stars has been included with an article by Fintan O’Toole looking at the context of the play and its impact.

It was not unreasonable to expect that the Abbey would mark the [tenth] anniversary [of the Easter Rising] respectfully. Instead it presented Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, which presented the Rising through the experiences of those who suffered most in Easter Week: the Dublin slum dwellers unwillingly thrust on to the frontline. And it suggested that, for them, the great event had brought nothing but deeper misery.

The article looks at how W.B. Yates defended the play and importance of the ability to accept failings and ambiguities as a mark of a mature nation.

The series of articles looks at many different artworks and their impact on Ireland and the wider world.