Gerardine Meaney, Mary O'dowd, and Bernadette Whelan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318924
- eISBN:
- 9781846319969
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318924.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Chapter six focuses in particular on the programme of plays produced by the Gate theatre from its foundation in 1929 to 1960. It points to the mixture of popular and more challenging modernist ...
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Chapter six focuses in particular on the programme of plays produced by the Gate theatre from its foundation in 1929 to 1960. It points to the mixture of popular and more challenging modernist productions presented in the Gate during these years. The diversity and range of work by women in this period has been overlooked until recently by Irish literary history. These productions were part of The Gate's diverse programme which indicates that theatre-goers were equally willing to attend plays by Dorothy Sayers, Anton Chekov and Eugene O’Neill and promiscuously mixed ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Chapter six also examines the Gate as a spaces of cultural and sexual dissidence in Dublin, suggesting a trace of an ‘other’ city, where both gender and other forms of identity were much more fluid than in official Ireland. The relationship between aesthetic and sexual freedom is a key theme in Irish writing in the post-independence period, but also an important point of intersection with both modernist and realist writing by women in the inter-war years. This chapter explores the paradox by which Christa Winsloe's ‘Children in Uniform’ could be performed on the Dublin stage in 1934, albeit to discretely subdued acclaim, but ‘Gone with the Wind’ could not be screened without significant cuts until 1968. Class and particularly the desire to control the cultural life of the working class is obviously key here, but analysis of Irish modernism in all its forms create a more complex picture. The permeability of the boundaries between high and low cultural forms and the processes of cultural exchange mediated questions of the ‘proper’ role of women in domestic, national and international contextsLess
Chapter six focuses in particular on the programme of plays produced by the Gate theatre from its foundation in 1929 to 1960. It points to the mixture of popular and more challenging modernist productions presented in the Gate during these years. The diversity and range of work by women in this period has been overlooked until recently by Irish literary history. These productions were part of The Gate's diverse programme which indicates that theatre-goers were equally willing to attend plays by Dorothy Sayers, Anton Chekov and Eugene O’Neill and promiscuously mixed ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Chapter six also examines the Gate as a spaces of cultural and sexual dissidence in Dublin, suggesting a trace of an ‘other’ city, where both gender and other forms of identity were much more fluid than in official Ireland. The relationship between aesthetic and sexual freedom is a key theme in Irish writing in the post-independence period, but also an important point of intersection with both modernist and realist writing by women in the inter-war years. This chapter explores the paradox by which Christa Winsloe's ‘Children in Uniform’ could be performed on the Dublin stage in 1934, albeit to discretely subdued acclaim, but ‘Gone with the Wind’ could not be screened without significant cuts until 1968. Class and particularly the desire to control the cultural life of the working class is obviously key here, but analysis of Irish modernism in all its forms create a more complex picture. The permeability of the boundaries between high and low cultural forms and the processes of cultural exchange mediated questions of the ‘proper’ role of women in domestic, national and international contexts
