Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement (review)

Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement, Mary Trotter's first book-length study, answers the call voiced recently by other Irish theatre historians to reassess the traditional, linear view of the inception of the Irish dramatic movement. Her project is to analyze historically how different nationalist organizations or institutions represented Irish nationhood on stage. The founding of the Abbey Theatre in 1904, she asserts, did not occur merely because of the efforts of a few high-profile literary figures but resulted from the endeavors and influence of many nationalist groups seeking to perform their political aims. Trotter also shows that "the representations of Irish culture by several nationalist groups contributed to the establishment of both Ireland's dramatic aesthetic and its national identity" (xviii), suggesting that the Irish dramatic movement became an instrument for national debate (168).