Cultural Convergence: The Dublin Gate Theatre, 1928-1960

2020

The pioneering efforts of the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) stimulated the influx of experimental plays from the European Continent and North America to Ireland and inspired Irish theatre-makers to revolutionize their dramaturgy. This book examines the Gate’s poetics over the first three decades of its existence, discussing some of its remarkable productions in the comparative contexts of avant-garde theatre and of Hollywood cinema and popular culture. It also investigates cultural exchanges pertaining to the development of Irish-language theatre and the politics of the Gate. The introduction summarizes existing research about the Gate, outlines the book’s concept of cultural convergence and its overall approach – which is intent on the exploration of wider global contexts of the work of the Gate – and outlines the argument of the authors in the subsequent chapters.

Syracuse University Press, 2021

In 1928, Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir founded the Dublin Gate Theatre, which quickly became renowned for producing stylistically and dramaturgically innovative plays in a uniquely avant-garde setting. While the Gate’s lasting importance to the history of Irish theater is generally attributed to its introduction of experimental foreign drama to Ireland, Van den Beuken shines a light on the Gate’s productions of several new Irish playwrights, such as Denis Johnston, Mary Manning, David Sears, Robert Collis, and Edward and Christine Longford. Having grown up during an era of political turmoil and bloodshed that led to the creation of an independent yet in many ways bitterly divided Ireland, these dramatists chose to align themselves with an avant-garde theater that explicitly sought to establish Dublin as a modern European capital. In examining an extensive corpus of archival resources, Van den Beuken reveals how the Gate Theatre became a site of avant-garde nationalism during Ireland’s tumultuous first post-independence decades.

In Gate Theatre studies, it is quite common for the theatre’s co-founders, Hilton Edwards and Micheál macLíammóir (né Alfred Willmore) to be described simply as “Englishmen”. This chapter breaks new ground by exploring the Irish roots of Edwards and macLíammóir, and the rumours that macLíammóir had Spanish and Jewish ancestry. “The Boys” were not the only figures associated with the early Gate to have “transnational” backgrounds. Coralie Carmichael, the theatre’s biggest female star in its early years, was of mixed Moroccan and Scottish ancestry, and Nancy Beckh, who worked as an actor, costume designer, and milliner for several Gate productions between 1932 and 1956, was a Dubliner of half-German descent. Using critical theories around “new interculturalism”, we suggest that the “mixed” backgrounds of the four artists examined helped them to create “intercultural performances”. We further demonstrate that these performances cannot be simply dismissed as examples of people from firmly established English, middle-class backgrounds condescendingly engaging in cultural imperialism or shallow cosmopolitanism. PLEASE NOTE: This chapter appears in an open-access (free!!!) edited collection which available for download here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-57562-5

2020

Based on extensive archival research, this open access book examines the poetics and politics of the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) over the first three decades of its existence, discussing some of its remarkable productions in the comparative contexts of avant-garde theatre, Hollywood cinema, popular culture, and the development of Irish-language theatre, respectively. The overarching objective is to consider the output of the Gate in terms of cultural convergence – the dynamics of exchange, interaction, and acculturation that reveal the workings of transnational infrastructures.

In A Stage of Emancipation: Change and Progress at the Dublin Gate Theatre. Eds. Marguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den Beuken. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2021. 131-148., 2021

The work and founding philosophy of Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure, founded in 1976 in the wake of Franco’s death, has been very similar to that of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Both theatres are known as practitioners’ theatres; both have struggled to understand if an “alternative national theatre” is necessarily undermined by accepting a state subsidy; both were guided early on by a curious combination of upper-class individuals and left-wing radicals; both have benefitted from the central involvement of female, LGBT, and migrant theatremakers; both took Bertolt Brecht as a model at key points in their history; and both have used a combination of international plays and original, home-grown dramas to address changing political circumstances in the regions where they were based. An issue related to this last point is the main focus of this paper. The Irish language played a key role in the early Gate Theatre, and Catalan has been the language used at the Teatre Lliure since its founding. In this paper, we will demonstrate that the cosmopolitan/transnational character of both theatres was not undermined but actually strengthened by their use of the local language. Central to this argument will be a linking of the role of translations into the minority language at both theatres. Specifically, in addressing Catalan audiences with stories that might be relevant to them, the Teatre Lliure has always translated works from across Europe into Catalan – as opposed to focussing primarily on works written originally in Spanish. Similarly, the Irish-language productions at the Gate (whether they were mounted as part of the theatre’s Christmas and summer revues or by An Comhar Drámmíochta, the Irish-language company hosted in the Gate on Sunday nights between 1931 and 1938) came from a wide array of sources. For example, Gate co-founder Micheál macLíammóir directed plays for An Comhar Drámmíochta during those years which were originally written by Anton Chekhov, Sacha Guitry (the Russian-born French playwright), Gregorio Martinez Sierra, Molière, Leo Tolstoy, Eca de Gueiroz, the Quintero brothers, and the French writing teams of Labiche-Martin and Erkmann-Chatrian. It is clear that, even while working in minority languages, these two theatres were far from “parochial” and were indeed making strong links to the wider world

The work and founding philosophy of Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure, founded in 1976 in the wake of Franco’s death, has been very similar to that of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Both theatres are known as practitioners’ theatres; both have struggled to understand if an “alternative national theatre” is necessarily undermined by accepting a state subsidy; both were guided early on by a curious combination of upper-class individuals and left-wing radicals; both have benefitted from the central involvement of female, LGBT, and migrant theatremakers; both took Bertolt Brecht as a model at key points in their history; and both have used a combination of international plays and original, home-grown dramas to address changing political circumstances in the regions where they were based. An issue related to this last point is the main focus of this paper. The Irish language played a key role in the early Gate Theatre, and Catalan has been the language used at the Teatre Lliure since its founding. In this paper, we will demonstrate that the cosmopolitan/transnational character of both theatres was not undermined but actually strengthened by their use of the local language. Central to this argument will be a linking of the role of translations into the minority language at both theatres. Specifically, in addressing Catalan audiences with stories that might be relevant to them, the Teatre Lliure has always translated works from across Europe into Catalan – as opposed to focussing primarily on works written originally in Spanish. Similarly, the Irish-language productions at the Gate (whether they were mounted as part of the theatre’s Christmas and summer revues or by An Comhar Drámmíochta, the Irish-language company hosted in the Gate on Sunday nights between 1931 and 1938) came from a wide array of sources. For example, Gate co-founder Micheál macLíammóir directed plays for An Comhar Drámmíochta during those years which were originally written by Anton Chekhov, Sacha Guitry (the Russian-born French playwright), Gregorio Martinez Sierra, Molière, Leo Tolstoy, Eca de Gueiroz, the Quintero brothers, and the French writing teams of Labiche-Martin and Erkmann-Chatrian. It is clear that, even while working in minority languages, these two theatres were far from “parochial” and were indeed making strong links to the wider world.

2014

The limits of scenography – like the limits of performance – are being continually expanded so that it is no longer contained within the theatre but can refer to the performative environments beyond. In this context, Ireland of the 1950s can be seen to have undergone significant scenographic changes, in which visual culture was harnessed to improve Ireland’s performance on the international stage. This essay engages both established and emerging definitions of scenography. It explores how the pioneering work of the Pike theatre, Dublin, can be seen to endorse a ‘stage of re-vision’ within Irish theatre of the 1950s. However, I also examine the ways in which the Pike’s scenographic aesthetics interact complexly with the changing scenography of Ireland at large. In doing so, I aim to illuminate the ways in which Ireland’s increasingly image-conscious culture can be seen to impact on the visual and performative character of Irish theatre.

Kritika Kultura, 2010

This essay proposes that stage design offers a means of establishing visual links to an aesthetically radical European modernism which was being explored by a post-Revolutionary generation of Irish artists and writers. Existing histories and critical studies of Irish theatre privilege literary approaches and consequently a rich seam of contextual visual material and information has been neglected. Given theatre’s important cultural role in shaping questions of national identity, “A Note on What Happened” argues that the study of theatre as spectacle is crucial to an understanding of how contemporary Irish audiences were introduced to avant-garde ideas.

This essay theorises a collage of theatrical, ideological and political moments reflecting notable shifts in thinking, theatre, and social practice pervading Celtic Tiger and post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Recent years have witnessed a radicalisation of theatre practices resulting in a greater focus and emphasis directed at the live receptive experience; the "audience"/"spectator"/"participant". At the same time, seismic changes in the socio-cultural and political sphere such as the digitalisation of society, a collapse of mass faith in organised religion, a faltering of established community values, the neoliberalism of state policies and work cultures, and the cynicism of an increasingly postmodern society and culture, are renegotiating the habits of everyday living practices and social experience. In performance, on stage and off, these shifts signal both a deconstruction and reinscription of the body, ideologically, politically and culturally. Hence, the objectives and scope of this essay; to review and examine this shifting cultural consciousness in contemporary Ireland, whereby engagement with (but not domination from) postmodern culture and society informs the making of contemporary theatre and performance, with increasing focus on the receptive experience as a political encounter.

2014