I love craft. I love the word

Despite the international acclaim and success of her plays, little commentary on Deirdre Kinahan appears in the existing scholarship. This collection (essays and an interview with Kinahan) brings together well-established scholars as well as fresh voices whose analyses provide a timely as well as long overdue critical introduction to Kinahan. It is most certainly an important book in the field of contemporary Irish theatre studies. (Joan FitzPatrick Dean, Professor Emerita, University of Missouri-Kansas City) This is an impressive collection of essays and one which is timely as Deirdre Kinahans status as a playwright both in Ireland and internationally is now well recognised. Collectively the essays make a very good case for an edited collection on Kinahans work. There is a good mix of scholars and scholarships and each essay deserves its place in the collection. An interview between Bisi Adigun and Deirdre Kinahan provides an ending which gives space for the authors own voice. (Brian Singleton, Professor, Trinity College Dublin)

Lisa Fitzpatrick is Senior Lecturer in Drama at University of Ulster in Derry. Her work is concerned with violence, post-conflict theatre and gender, and she is the author of Rape on the Contemporary Stage (2017), as well as edited collections on Performing Violence in Contemporary Ireland (2010) and Performing Feminisms in Contemporary Ireland (2013). Her current work explores gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict societies and involves a collaboration with Kabosh Theatre Company, Belfast. She is co-convenor of the Feminist Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research, as well as a founding member of the Irish Society for Theatre Studies. Mria Kurdi is Professor Emerita in the Institute of English Studies at the University of Pcs, Hungary. Her research focuses on modern Irish literature, English-speaking drama and comparative studies. She has published seven books and edited or co-edited several essay collections. Her own books include Representations of Gender and Female Subjectivity in Contemporary Irish Drama by Women (Edwin Mellen, 2010), Approaches to Irish Theatre through a Hungarians Lens (University of Pcs, 2018) and a monograph on J. M. Synge in Hungarian (Pcs: Kronosz kiad, 2021). Her edited volumes include Literary and Cultural Relations: Ireland, Hungary, and Central and Eastern Europe and Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland (co-edited with Miriam Haughton), which Carysfort Press published in 2009 and 2015, respectively. Mria Kurdi has numerous articles in English and Hungarian journals as well as essay collections. In 2020 she edited a block of essays about aging and ageism in literature and theatre for the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, which will be part of a book on the subject she is editing for HJEAS Books, New Series, to be published in 2022.

Contents: Deirdre OLeary: Reckonings in Small Rooms: Staging Trauma in Moment and Rathmines Road Donald E. Morse: The afternoon of life: Ageing, Dementia and Dying in Deirdre Kinahans Halcyon Days Rebecca (Bex) Wharton: Haunted by the Past: Representations of Women in the Plays of Deirdre Kinahan Aileen Ruane: Translation, Adaptation and Feminism: Revealing A Familiar Reflex of the Repressed in Deirdre Kinahans The Unmanageable Sisters Eamonn Jordan: Intersectionality and Form in Five Short Plays by Deirdre Kinahan Lisa Fitzpatrick: I suppose I feel disappeared meself: Shamed and Silenced Characters in Deirdre Kinahans BogBoy Wei H. Kao: Problematizing the Easter Rising in Monologues: Deirdre Kinahans Wild Sky and Other Irish Plays Mria Kurdi: An Act of Love? Filicide and Child-killing in Marina Carrs By the Bog of Cats and Deirdre Kinahans Spinning Lenke Nmeth: Moments that Matter: Hue & Cry and Moment by Deirdre Kinahan and American Family Drama Tanya Dean: Nevertheless, She Persisted: Deirdre Kinahans Plays in the United States Bisi Adigun: An Other Interview with Dee Lisa Fitzpatrick and Mria Kurdi: Afterword Links to Significant Critical Reviews of Deirdre Kinahan: Productions in Ireland and Elsewhere.