Examining a collection of Irish plays, this book highlights how specific theatrical productions reflect the global factors at work in modern Ireland. Also, it seeks to document how Irish dramatists exert an impact on theatre practitioners from non-English speaking countries and enrich their stage aesthetics.

This monograph is one of the first to examine a collection of Irish plays from a transnational perspective in today's era of globalization. The works dealt with in this study dramatize how foreign cultures are integrated into contemporary Ireland. In addition, they focus on the experiences of immigrants and marginalized people living on the fringes of Irish society. The aim of this book is therefore two-fold: first, it highlights how specific theatrical productions reflect the global factors at work in modern Ireland; second, it seeks to document how Irish dramatists exert a profound impact on theatre practitioners from non-English speaking countries and enrich their stage aesthetics. Accordingly, the works discussed in this book have not been authored by Irish playwrights only. They are set in the Middle East, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA. This monograph concentrates both on canonical and established playwrights, such as Dion Boucicault, Edward Harrigan, Eugene O'Neill, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett, Frank McGuinness, Sebastian Barry, Tom Murphy, Marina Carr, and on lesser-known writers, including Jimmy Murphy, Dolores Walshe, Damian Smyth, Colin Teevan, among others.

Autorentext

Wei H. Kao, who holds a doctorate from the University of Kent, now lectures at National Taiwan University. He is the author of The Formation of an Irish Literary Canon in the Midtwentieth Century (2007). His articles on Irish writers and culture have appeared in Journal of Beckett Studies, Irish Studies Review, Essays on Modern Irish Literature (2007), Iris Murdoch and Moral Imaginations (2010), and Irish Women at War (2010).

Inhalt

Content: I. When Incest Is Not A Taboo: Desire and the Land in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms and Marina Carr's On Raftery's Hill - II. Remaking the Stage Irishman in the New World: Dion Boucicault's The Shaughraun, Edward Harrigan's The Mulligan Guard Ball, and Sebastian Barry's White Woman Street - III. Migrant Workers on Stage: Tom Murphy's Conversations on a Homecoming and Jimmy Murphy's The Kings of the Kilburn High Road - IV. A Russian Mirror to Ireland: Migration in Tom Murphy's The House and Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard - V. South Africa, Racism, and Irish Sectarianism in Dolores Walshe's In the Talking Dark and Damian Smyth's Soldiers of the Queen - VI. Transnational Ireland on Stage: America to Middle East in Three Texts - VII. Peace and Beyond in the Middle East: Colin Teevan's War Trilogy - VIII. Voices from Two Theatrical Others: Labor Issues in the Theatres of Ireland and Taiwan - IX. Samuel Beckett in Taiwan: Cross-cultural Innovations and Significance - X. The Irish at Home and Abroad: Transnational Practices.