‘No comfort talking when there’s a man around’: Maura Laverty’s Tolka Row (1951) and a neglected tradition of popular drama at the Gate Theatre, Dublin

This essay presents a case for Maura Laverty’s play Tolka Row (1951) to be recognised as a highly-accomplished prototype of the soap opera in Ireland. It argues that Tolka Row is an important Irish iteration of a quintessentially modern form that swept across Europe and the rest of the world in tandem with advances in broadcasting in the twentieth century. The analysis focuses on the unique way in which the play portrays the lived experiences of working-class women through unadorned, everyday ‘talk’. The innovative approach to dialogue in Tolka Row situates the play as an important precursor to the development of the television serial in Ireland – not merely due to its popularity and working-class milieu, as has been acknowledged in the past, but due to its creative formal characteristics. This paper thus suggests a reassessment of the legacy of the Gate Theatre, which has to date been defined primarily in relation to its production of avant-garde plays. While the Gate has been widely acknowledged as a bastion of European modernism in Ireland, Tolka Row forms part of the theatre’s contribution to the development of a different kind of response to modernization, in the form of popular culture. By drawing on previously unexplored archival material which shows evidence of significant cuts to the original script, this paper suggests that the directors of Gate Theatre Productions – Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Líammóir – either denied or disavowed the extent to which a more popular drama could impact Irish theatre and society. Keywords: Gate Theatre, Maura Laverty, Tolka Row, serial, soap, popular culture, consciousness raising.

Commedia dell’arte and the Gate Theatre

This essay reveals the centrality of commedia dell’arte in defining the Gate’s theatrical style in the first four decades of its existence. In its theatricality, as well as its emphasis on the international and the queer, Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir found the commedia dell’arte to be an ideal theatrical precedent for their own ambitions and practice. Drawing on materials in the Gate Theatre Digital Archive, NUI Galway, newspaper archives, research by Christopher FitzSimons, David Clare and Nicola Morris and the books of Edwards and mac Liammóir this article charts the origins of their engagement with and conception of the commedia dell’arte and its manifestation in their writings and theatre productions. Building on the work of Eibhear Walshe and Richard Pine on mac Liammóir’s adoption of masks of identity, it is also argues that both Edwards and mac Liammóir assumed the masks of Harlequin and Pierrot, in their writing and performing in order to reveal and shape their queer identities. This examination confirms how embedded European theatrical practice was in the stagecraft of one of Ireland’s premiere theatres and in so doing allows for networks of international artistic influence to be traced in the development of contemporary Irish performance. Keywords: Gate Theatre Dublin, Irish theatre, commedia dell’arte, queer, Hilton Edwards, Micheál mac Liammóir, modernism.

A Stage for the Outsiders of Neoliberal Capitalism: Dublin’s Gate Theatre, European Austerity and #WakingTheFeminists

This essay analyses Selina Cartmell’s first season as artistic director of Dublin’s Gate theatre, in 2018 in relation to the development of neoliberalism in Ireland and the part played by the European Union in this process. Key social and political contexts are identified in order to frame this analysis, including the concentration of power in the upper-classes distinctive of neoliberalism; the relevance of historical memory in Irish culture; the restructuring of the Irish Arts Council in consequence of post-2008 austerity; and, the influence of #WakingTheFeminists’ protests against the marginalisation of women in the Irish theatre. It is argued that Selina Cartmell successfully fostered the reception of a grassroots movement (#WakingTheFeminists) into a mainstream institution (the Gate, Dublin). However, attention is brought to a pattern of homologation to neoliberal hegemony within such reception, determined by the influences of national (Irish) and supranational (EU) interventions. The article concludes with a reflection on the possibility of counter-performances resistant to neoliberal hegemony within the current Irish and European cultural industry and in the new contexts of the Covid 19 pandemic. Keywords: Gate Theatre Dublin; Irish Theatre; #WakingTheFeminists; European austerity; Celtic Tiger.

Hilton Edwards, Brecht and the Brechtian

The Dublin Gate Theatre Company’s repertory of international, often experimental plays offers perhaps the clearest distinction between the Gate and the Abbey in the mid-twentieth century. A growing body of scholarship focuses on how Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir deployed innovative, non-realistic staging techniques and brought to Ireland design elements associated with European artists. The Gate’s international remit can also be seen in its production of plays not merely authored by foreign playwrights, but focused on issues outside the conventional purview of Irish politics, including anti-Semitism and totalitarianism. Throughout his career, Hilton Edwards often sought out non-realistic dramaturgies to critique modern institutions. Some of the plays chosen by Edwards and mac Liammóir were so provocative, socially-conscious, and politically-charged that they challenged the prevailing ethos in Catholic Ireland and incurred the wrath of the Catholic Cinema and Theatre Patrons’ Association. Edwards’ exposure to Bertolt Brecht’s plays, theories, and the 1956 London performances by the Berliner Ensemble prompted not only his production of Mother Courage in 1959 and Saint Joan of the Stockyards two years later, but also his greater willingness to comment on theatre, for example on the radio and in his book The Mantle of Harlequin (1958). Edwards shared with Brecht an awareness of music as integral to performance and a vision of theatre unconstrained by realism and the proscenium arch. Although the Gate repertory of new productions in the post-Emergency era may appear unsurprising, that perspective is informed by the half century in which dramatists such as Arthur Miller and Brecht emerged canonical figures. Hilton Edwards’ direction of Mother Courage and Saint Joan of the Stockyards advanced the Gate’s internationalism and helped to reshape the political nature of Irish theatre. Keywords: Hilton Edwards, Dublin Gate Theatre, Bertolt Brecht, Irish theatre, theatre and politics, Brechtian

Introduction

RISE 4.1 examines the complex interplay between Irish and European culture via the Dublin Gate Theatre from its founding in 1928 to the present day. The issue explores Irish presentations of European work and Irish theatre that connects variously with Europe. But it also shows how the Gate's prioritisation of excellence in directing, design, and adaptation positions the Gate within wider networks of European artistic exchange. The articles in this issue question how such exchange in its diversity of thought and practice has allowed for greater inclusivity of marginalised groups but has also led to elitism and exclusion. Keywords: Dublin Gate Theatre, Irish Theatre, European Culture, European Stagecraft