The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, Volumes 1 & 2

David Clare is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Fiona McDonagh is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Justine Nakase is Adjunct Lecturer at Portland State University.

Volume 1
IntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine Nakase

“There’s no Place like old England”: Space and Identity in Mary Davys’s The Northern Heiress; Or, the Humours of York (1716)
Marguérite Corporaal
“Some tender scenes demand the melting tear”: Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery (1763) and the Vindication of “Sentimental Comedy”
Conrad Brunström

Irish Wit on the London Stage: Elizabeth Griffith’s The Platonic Wife (1765)
Clíona Ó Gallchoir

Deceptive Disabilities in Maria Edgeworth’s The Double Disguise (1786): Irish Patriotism, Consumption, and the Martial Male Body
Sonja Lawrenson

Reimagining Maria Edgeworth’s The Knapsack (1801) for a Contemporary Young Audience
Fiona McDonagh & Marc Mac Lochlainn

Mary Balfour’s Kathleen O’Neil (1814): An Expression or Betrayal of Her Ulster Scots Background?
David Clare

Justice and the “Triple Goddess” Archetypes in Anna Maria Hall’s Mabel’s Curse (1837)
Ciara Moloney

Operas without a Hero: A Comic Trilogy (1876–1879) by Elena Norton and Mary HeyneMark Fitzgerald

“Petticoats!—petticoats! petticoats!”: Sartorial Economics in Clotilde Graves’s A Mother of Three (1896)
Justine Nakase

From Gort to Antarctica: Lady Gregory’s Audiences and The Rising of the Moon (1903)
Anna Pilz

Lady Gregory’s Grania (1912): Myth and Mythology
Shirley-Anne Godfrey

“You have let the play go to pieces”: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne R. Day’s Fox and Geese (1917) and the Hegemony of the Early Abbey Theatre
Thomas Conway

“Something left over from the Eighteenth Century, undergoing a slow process of decay”: The Impotence of the Ascendancy in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–? (1931)
Ruud van den Beuken

Shape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017) by Amanda Coogan in Collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, an Appropriation of Teresa Deevy’s The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935)
Úna Kealy & Kate McCarthy

The Premiere Staging of Mount Prospect (1940) by Elizabeth Connor (the Pen Name of Una Troy) at the Abbey Theatre
Ciara O’Dowd

Corruption and Socio-Political Tensions in Christine Longford’s Tankardstown (1948)
Kevin O’Connor

Social Class, Space, and Containment in 1950s Ireland: Maura Laverty’s “Dublin Trilogy” (1951–1952)
Cathy Leeney & Deirdre McFeely

Máiréad Ní Ghráda’s An Triail/On Trial (1964): Hiding Hypocrisy in Plain Sight
Feargal Whelan

Christina Reid: Acts of Memory in Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989)
Emilie Pine

Anne Devlin: Depicting a Gendered Journey: Men and Women on The Long March (1984)
Megan W. Minogue

A Partial Eclipse: The Role of the Religious in Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed (1988 / 1992)
Patricia O’Beirne

Coda – What the Woman Sees: Waking Up to Feminist Aesthetics
Cathy Leeney

Volume 2
Introduction
David Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine Nakase

Marie Jones’s Don’t Look Down (1992): Representations of Disability for Young Audiences
Fiona McDonagh

Lesbianism and Legibility in Emma Donoghue’s I Know My Own Heart (1993)
Shonagh Hill

Learning to Play Poker: The Re-vision of Irish Women’s Agency in Gina Moxley’s Danti-Dan (1995)
Nelson Barre

Directing Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… (1998) in China
Sarah Jane Scaife

Ursula Rani Sarma’s Blue (2000) and Social Transformation in Ireland
Shane O’Neill

Challenging “Good Taste”: Roslaeen McDonagh’s The Baby Doll Project (2003) and the Creation of a “Traveller Canon”
Mary Burke

Disordered States and Affective Economies in Stella Feehily’s O Go My Man (2006)
Clare Wallace

Living in a Rape Culture: Gang Rape and “Toxic Masculinity” in Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006)
Carole Quigley

Marina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow (2006) and the Ars Moriendi
José Lanters

Lizzie Nunnery’s Intemperance (2007) and Compromised Mental Health among the Irish in Britain
David Clare

Memory, History, and Forgetting in Anne Devlin’s The Forgotten (2009)
Graham Price

“We are here, we were here all along”: Queer Invisibility and Performing Age in Amy Conroy’s I (Heart) Alice (Heart) I (2010)
Brenda O’Connell

Motherhood and the Search for Recognition in Deirdre Kinahan’s Moment (2011)
Dorothy Morrissey

“Unrealing the Real”: Disability and Darwinism in Lynda Radley’s Futureproof (2011)
Siobhán Purcell

Family Dysfunction and Character Dynamics: Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl (2012) in Conversation with Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlin (1996) and Martin Crimp’s The Country (2000)
Mária Kurdi

Unconscious Casting: Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015), Walls, and the (En)Gendering of Violence
Justine Nakase

Nevertheless, She Persisted: Celia de Fréine’s Luíse (2016)
Brian Ó Conchubhair

Coda – Spinning Gold: Threads of Augusta Gregory and Marina Carr
Melissa Sihra