Tom Maguire – författare

Making Theatre in Northern Ireland examines the relationships between theatre and the turbulent political and social context of Northern Ireland since 1969. It explores in detail key theatrical performances which deal directly with this context. The works examined are used as exemplars of wider approaches to theatre-making about Northern Ireland.The book is aimed at a student readership: it is largely play-text-based, and it contains useful contextualising material such as a chronological list of Northern Ireland’s plays in the modern period, a full bibliography, and a brief chronology.Students find it hard to obtain any detailed and informed perspective on this key element of the theatre of Ireland and Britain: Northern Ireland’s theatrical traditions are normally discussed only as an adjunct to discussions of Irish theatre more generally, or as so exceptional as to be beyond comparison with others. This book sets out to fill this gap.

Marie Jones is one of the most prolific and popular writers working in Northern Irish theatre today. Her work has achieved local relevance and international recognition. In the course of a remarkable career now spanning five decades, Jones has been an actor, playwright, and screenwriter; she also helped to establish two major Irish theatre companies (Charabanc and DubbelJoint) as well as playing a major role in theatre-in-education through her plays for Replay Productions. From her earliest work with Charabanc in the early 1980s to the present day, Jones’s work has engaged with Irish (and, more often than not, specifically Northern Irish) experience in ways that reveal the extent to which the personal is political in a distinctive form of popular theatre. This volume of essays engages critically with Jones’s oeuvre, her reception in Ireland and beyond, and her position in the canon of contemporary drama.