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The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide

Review by Abie Philbin Bowman on 14 April 2012

If you're determined to perform a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, following Mark Fisher's Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide: How to Make Your Show a Success will save you several thousand pounds. I make a similar claim about the workshops and consultations which I sporadically host. In truth, you could save...

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Actors' Voices

Review by Jane Coyle on 15 March 2012

Actors’ Voices gives a rare platform to the most undervalued creative employees in the theatre industry – the stage actors themselves. As a 13 year-old student at St. Malachy’s College, an all-boys Catholic grammar school in Belfast, Patrick O’Kane was press-ganged into making...

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No More Drama

Review by Fintan Walsh on 11 November 2011

Without an interrogative or a subtitle, Crawley and White’s edited volume of essays on contemporary theatre practice risks resounding with the force of an order: ‘NO MORE DRAMA’ they insist. But in borrowing the title from a Mary J. Blige hit, the collection is more playfully inflected...

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Queer Notions: New Plays and Performances from Ireland

Review by Patrick Lonergan on 30 January 2011

Fintan Walsh’s new anthology begins with a line that seems in danger of subverting the rest of the book. “There is strength in numbers, so they say,” writes Frank McGuinness in his foreword – before adding “I’ve never believed [that], and I’m glad that I haven’t.”...

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Shakespeare and the Irish Writer

Review by Patrick Lonergan on 12 May 2010

Shakespeare, wrote Ben Jonson, was both the “soul of the age” and “for all time”. His work, that is, encapsulated the life of his society – but it also transcended space and time, acquiring universal importance. That duality is especially important when Shakespeare is considered...

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Dissident Dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish Theatre

Review by Thomas Conway on 11 March 2010

Eight years ago Irish Theatre Magazine looks at the vexed question of dramaturgy for the first time with the intention to demystify it (ITM, Summer 2002). Rosy Barnes surveys what is a recent development in Irish theatre and hears time and again how dramaturgy is the bridge to the professionalization...

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Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture

Review by Sara Keating on 02 December 2009

One of the great legacies of postmodern philosophy is the idea that human identity is a series of performances. As social beings, we rely on the world around us as our audience, and each interaction ushers in a new performance. As we dress the children for school we play mother; as we stand at the top...

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Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present

Review by Fintan Walsh on 09 October 2009

Over the past two decades, theatre makers have frequently turned to documentary modes of performance to explore social and political realities. Tribunal theatre, verbatim theatre, auto/biography, and documentary film rank among the most familiar terms for this kind of work, while a questioning of ‘truth’...

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Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era

Review by Emilie Pine on 13 April 2009

In Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era Patrick Lonergan stages a debate about theatre and the impact of globalisation. Far from interpreting globalisation as a monolithic phenomenon, this study interrogates the multifaceted nature of the global cultural marketplace and locates...

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