Performing the Body in Irish Theatre

BERNADETTE SWEENEY lectures in Drama and Theatre Studies at University College Cork, Republic of Ireland. She is a graduate of the School of Drama, Trinity College Dublin, where she completed her doctoral research and taught theatre practice. She has also worked as an actor and director; recent productions include Machinal by Sophie Treadwell and Synge's Riders to the Sea.

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction The Absent Body? Performing Tradition The Inanimate Body: The Great Hunger The Savage Body: The Saxon Shore The Dancing Body: Dancing at Lughnasa The Troubled Body: At the Black Pig's Dyke The Indeterminate Body: Low in the Dark The Present Body? Evolving Tradition Select Bibliography Index

'This book is at the forefront of the emerging field of Irish Performance Studies. While Sweeney offers original readings of some well known and several lesser known texts (such as Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa , Tom MacIntyre's The Great Hunger , David Rudkin's The Saxon Shore and Marina Carr's Low in the Dark ), she emphasizes the complex interweaving of text and performance in the emergence of new Irish theatre practices. She combines detailed analysis of texts and productions with a broad framework of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish theatre. Performing the Body in Irish Theatre re-visions Irish theatre history in its insistence on theatre as an embodied practice, whether in the work of W.B. Yeats or in the choreography of Michael Keegan Dolan.' - Anna McMullan, Chair in Drama, Queen's University Belfast, UK