Lisa Fitzpatrick’s “Disrupting Metanarratives: Anne Devlin, Christina Reid, Marina Carr, and the Irish Dramatic Repertory”

蔡純瑋

Summary

        The goals of the essay are 1) to probe into the obstacles that Irish women playwrights have faced; 2) to compare the strategies that women playwrights use to tackle social prejudices against them. According to Fitzpatrick, Irish women playwrights have collectively unsettled the male-dominant Irish theatre, as well as the discourses of Irish nationalism, Ulster loyalism, and post-coloniality. By featuring ignored female experiences in Ireland, their works provide a more incisive look at the patriarchy of Irish culture.

        Fitzpatrick also elaborates social changes prompted by Irish women’s writings. First of all, their writings question the gendered myth of Irish republicanism. The bond between dramatic female figures and the nationalistic ideology is thus unsettled. Secondly, the collective force which Irish women writers gather effectively disrupts the sectarian myths that often incur violence against “the other” community. Their foci on ignored of women’s experiences, as a result, not only enrich the Irish theatre but create alternative perspectives regarding Irish nation formation.

        The author also examines works by Irish female playwrights, including those by Anne Devlin, Christina Reid, and Marina Carr, so as to position them in the contemporary Irish theatre—with women’s voices in particular. The author also reminds the readers of the differences between plays by women and plays about women. That is, if the two types of drama are mixed unselectively, the significance of each individual play would be effaced: “if women on stage represent only women – as opposed to men on stage who represent the entire community – then the work can also seem minor, documentary, overly realistic” (322-323).

Work Citied

Sihra, Melissa, ed. Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Boyle, Patricia, ed. Opening the Field: Irish Women: Texts and Contexts. Cork: Cork UP 2007.

Female voices finally finding a stage (IrishTimes.com)

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0302/1224291133331.html