Contents: Eamonn Jordan Introduction [xi] Thomas Kilroy A Generation of Playwrights [1] Deelan Hughes Who The Hell Do We Think We Still Are? Reflections On Irish Theatre and Identity [8] Mananne McDonald Classics as Celtic Firebrand: GreekTragedy, Irish Playwrights, and Colonialism [16] Lionel Pilkington Theatre History and the Beginnings of the Irish National Theatre Project [27] Anna MeMullan Gender, Authorship and Performance in Selected Plays by Contemporary Irish Women Playwrights: Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, Marie Jones, Marina Cart, Enima Donoghue [34] Finlan O Toole Irish Theatre: The State of the Art [47] Bruce Arnold The State of Irish Theatre [59] Ashley Taggart Theatre of war? Contemporary drama in Northern Ireland [67] Caoimhe McAvinchg Theatre - Act or Place? [84] Joseph Long Come Dance With Me in Ireland: Current developments in the independent theatre sector [89] Jocelyn Clarke (Un)Critical Conditions [95] Redmond O'Hanion Brian Friel's Dialogue with Euripides: Living Quarters [107] Bernice Schrank Politics, Language, Metatheatre: Friel's The Freedom of the City, and the Formation of an Engaged Audience [122] Declan Kiberd Theatre as Opera: The Cigli Conced [145] Anne F. Keljl Bodies and Spirits in Tom Murphy's Theatre [159] Terry Eaglelon Unionism and Utopia: Seamus Heaney's The Cure al Troil [172] Akiko Satake The Seven Ages of Henry Joy McCracken: Stewart Parker's Northern Star a History Play of the United Irishmen in 1798 [176] Deirdre Mulrooney Tom MacIntyre's Text-ure [187] Eamonn Jordan From Playground to Battleground: Metatheatricality in the Plays of Frank McGuinness [194] Christopher-Murray Billy Roche's Wexford Trilogy: Setting, Place, Critique [209] Ger Fitzgibbon The Poetic Theatre of Sebastian Barry [224] Riana O'Dwyer The Imagination of Women's Reality: Christina Reid and Marina Carr [236] Alartine Pelletier Dermot Bolger's Drama [249] Melissa Sibra A Cautionary Tale: Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats [257] Fric Weltz Barabbas at Play with The Whiteheaded Boy [269] Victor Merriman Songs of possible worlds: nation, representation and citizenship in the work of Calypso Productions [280] Karen Vandevelde The Gothic Soap of Martin McDonagh [292] Scott T. Cummings Homo Fabulator: The Narrative Imperative in Conor McPherson's Plays [303] Biography of Cownbutors [313] Index [318]