Challenging the Peace: The Counter-Narratives of Northern Irish Women Playwrights, 1980-2012

When addressing the contributions of Northern Irish women playwrights, Irish scholarship tends to cite Christina Reid, Anne Devlin, and Marie Jones, along with a cursory nod to the Charabanc Theatre Company, as the primary and only examples of women's writing from the North. While the plays of these early pioneers are important, they are far from being the only or most significant examples of women's theatrical contributions. Current scholarship erroneously gives the impression that the North has not produced a significant female playwright since the early 1980s. It also creates a false perception that the North experienced a brief and isolated renaissance of women playwrights only to have their contributions overshadowed by male playwrights like Brian Friel, Stewart Parker, Gary Mitchell, and others. These men have received enormous critical and scholarly attention while women playwrights have been essentially written out of history and the theatrical canon. In fact, during the 1980s and 1990s, the theatre companies of Charabanc, DubbelJoint, and JustUs dramatized the development of the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland in an attempt to show how historical and political conditions perpetuated violence and divisions. The companies provided new jobs and training for women in the theatre, created a new audience-base, and established a model of bringing artistic work into rural and working-class areas.

The tendency of scholars and critics to overlook women's contributions continues in the present. There has been little examination of the female playwrights who are now emerging to lead the North in a cultural revival. A new generation of playwrights such as Abbie Spallen, Stacey Gregg, Rosemary Jenkinson, Patricia Downey, and Shannon Yee is exploring how the peace process is shaping women's subjectivity and their relationship to the newly forming state. In order to combat persistent notions that Jones, Reid, and Devlin are the primary female contributors from the North, this study repositions the Charabanc, DubbelJoint, and JustUs theatre companies as central to the development of Northern drama. In addition, recent contributions by a new generation of playwrights shows a continued legacy of women writers addressing gender politics and giving voice to marginalized groups. While the government continues to promote images of a new and improved Northern Ireland, contemporary women playwrights are challenging these constructed images of the North and suggesting that the Troubles continues to radically shape women's sexuality, subjectivity, and professional and personal opportunities.

In charting the development of women playwrights in Northern Ireland, this dissertation (1) broadens the dialogue about female playwrights from the North, rewriting women into history; (2) analyzes how the transition from violence to peace over the past thirty years has affected women's writing and professional opportunities in the theatre; and (3) provides an overview of what contemporary women playwrights are writing about today and their current positioning within Irish theatre.