ISTR Publications

Since the late 1990s the field of theatre research in Ireland has grown exponentially. Through the dissemination of research on the broad spectrum of theatre and performance since its inception in 2008, the Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR) has been at the forefront of new avenues of enquiry into practical, theoretical, and historiographical approaches to making and seeing theatre in Ireland in its national and international contexts. In its three volumes published between 2008 and 2014, peer-reviewed Irish Theatre International (Carysfort Press) offers scholarly articles on the work of significant theatre companies and playwrights as well as opening the discourse on bridges between theatre practice, theatre research and performance studies.

Performance and Ireland

The Society’s next publication focuses on ‘Performance and Ireland’ and promotes examinations of Ireland and Irishness from the perspectives of Performance Studies and Visual Culture. Due out in late 2020 as a special issue of Scene(Intellect Books), this volume of articles by scholars and practitioners aims to provide a forum for examining a range of artistic practices as well as for studying different indigenous, migrant and diasporic Irish cultures through the lenses of performance and performativity.

Editors: Marie Kelly (kelly.marie@ucc.ie) / Siobhán O’Gorman (sogorman@lincoln.ac.uk) / Áine Phillips (aphillips@burrencollege.ie)

Irish Theatre International

Irish Theatre International Vol. 3 No.1. 2014

Edited by : Miriam Haughton and Mária Kurdi 

This collection bridges the discourses of theatre practice and research with that of performance studies, and also with the ways in which social, economic, political and cultural activities perform their needs and demands. Recent decades honed these links through the ‘turn to performance’ markedly explored in the US since the 1960s, as ideas of play, ritual, and performativity flowered and cross-pollinated the humanities and indeed, scientific disciplines, crossing shores and attracting a global reach. This bridge specifically locates these interdisciplinary enquiries in the context of neoliberal economic cultures pervading the western world and further afield, produced and managed under the costume of ‘freedom’.

Neoliberal engineers and advocates argue for the economic and social benefits such policies offer, foregrounding their argument around the notion of ‘freedom’.

Contributors include: Christopher Collins, Siobhan O’Gorman, Lisa Fitzgerald, Eamonn Jordan, Cormac O’Brien and Neil Watkins. 

Book reviews by Audrey McNamara, Miklós Nyisztor, Lisa Fitzgerald and Lilien Halada.

Irish Theatre International Vol. 1 No.2. 2009

Edited by : Paul Murphy

The second volume focuses on the dramatic canon of Brian Friel as a celebration of the authors 80th birthday. Articles reflect the range and calibre of Friel’s work, covering his earliest plays from The Blind Mice (1963), through to his magnum opus Translations (1980) and up to his most recent work to date.

Contributors include: Scott Boltwood, Christopher Murray, Anthony Roche, Nicholas Grene, Helen Lojek and Anna McMullen.

Irish Theatre International, Vol. 1, No. 1. 2008

Edited by : Paul Murphy

This inaugural issue offers a wide range of scholarly articles on theatre and performance from page to stage in Ireland. Across seven chapters, authors explore paradigm shifts in the political landscape of Northern Ireland in terms of media representation; the Northern Revival and the Ulster Literary Theatre; the death of self in Marina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow; aesthetic and ideological concerns in Operating Theatre’s site-specific work; queer performance and homosexuality within Irish theatrical culture and its wider context; intertextual links between the work of Flann O’Brien (Myles na gCopaleen) and Erwin Schrödinger in Rough Magic’s Improbable Frequency.

Contributors include: Enrica, Cerquoni, Mark Phelan, Ondřej Pilný, Janelle Reinelt, Melissa Sihra, Fintan Walsh.