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• In Memoriam: Sam Shepard

  Donald E. Morse

  Views:

  59

  In Memoriam: Sam Shepard

• The Memory of Land in Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints

  Katarína Havranová

  Views:

  123

  Chicana playwright Cherríe Moraga attributes healing power to memory, which has an important geographical dimension in her play Heroes and Saints (1994). The play dramatizes the suffering of a community of Mexican Americans in California, whose women and children are affected by toxic poisoning as a consequence of agriculture’s overt reliance on pesticides. Whereas critical discussions have dealt extensively with the representation of the body in the play, this study argues for the recognition that the land and the particular places the individual characters inhabit have a decisive impact on the formation of the body. The memory of the land—the Mexican homeland of the immigrant people and the lands of a transnational Latino imagination—is a transformative force in the play, which impels the community to recognize the need to stand up for their rights.

• “What stood in the Post Office / With Pearse and Connolly?”: Heroism, Timeliness, and Timelessness in Some of Yeats’s Plays

  Edit Bődy

  Views:

  284

  The essay discusses a frequently recurring type of hero found in William Butler Yeats’s plays, including the last one, The Death of Cuchulain (1939). This hero-figure occurs quite early in Yeats’s oeuvre: The Green Helmet (1910), for example, already focuses on the definition of hero and heroism and different versions of this hero type also occur in other plays, such as The King’s Threshold (1904) and The Player Queen (1922). In dramas, where this motif plays an important role, his source is in part Nietzsche’s tragic hero completed with other features. As early as The Green Helmet, Yeats defines what makes a hero: apart from bravery, also gaiety, a kind of ecstasy is needed. Cuchulain’s goal to become the hero, smiling even in the shadow of death, is achieved in Yeats’s last play, and the Cuchulain-image emerging from the Anima Mundi binds past and present. (EB)

• “No Country for Old Men”: A Poignant Portrayal of Aging and Ageism in Arthur Miller’s Mr. Peters’ Connections

  Ambika Singh

  Views:

  146

  Mr. Peters’ Connections (1998) is often viewed as Arthur Miller’s most experimental late play. Yet, despite its uniqueness and evident dramatic value, scholarly
  commentary usually focuses on its likeness with Pinter and Beckett plays and sometimes on how it is an apt product of an “octogenarian” mind. Although the
  play is also an apropos depiction of the dilemma of aging in ageist America, no scholarly work has analyzed it through the lens of critical gerontology or age studies. Drawing on gerontological studies and research, the essay sheds light on the meaninglessness and disillusionment suffered by elderly adults every day of their lives—the struggles whose apt embodiment we find in Mr. Harry Peters, the central character of Miller’s play. (AS)

• Death onto Life—A Guide to Edward Albee

  Boróka Prohászka-Rád

  Views:

  65

  Book review:

  Roudané, Matthew. Edward Albee: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. 200 pages. ISBN 978-0-521-72695-5. Pbk. £14.99.

• The Aging of the “Youngest People in Europe”

  Donald E. Morse

  Views:

  71

  Book review:

  Ingman, Heather. Ageing in Irish Writing: Strangers to Themselves. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 209 pages. ISBN 978 3 319 96429-4. Hb. €74.89.

• Civic Pageantry in Early Modern London: Contexts and New Research Methodologies

  Natália Pikli

  Views:

  158

  Book reviews:

  Finlayson, J. Caitlin and Amrita Sen, eds. Civic Performance. Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London. Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2020. xiv + 254 pages. ISBN 978-1-138-22839-9. Hb. £96.

• O joy, O joy, the Hobby-Horse is Remembered

  Veronika Schandl

  Views:

  139

  Book review:

  Pikli, Natália. Shakespeare’s Hobby-Horse and Early Modern Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 2021. 286 pages. ISBN 9780367514150. Hb. $160.00

• “Telling My Side of Things”: Tolstoy Novellas into Monologue Drama

  Zsuzsanna Csikai

  Views:

  49

   

  The paper examines two drama adaptations of Tolstoy’s novellas, Nancy Harris’s The Kreutzer Sonata (2009) and Peter Reid’s Desire (2014), both recent additions to contemporary Irish theatre’s abundant number of adaptations as well as male monologue plays. The exploration of the adaptation strategies assesses how Harris and Reid engage with these nineteenth-century works so that the old narratives are endowed with new relevance. While Harris’s play, which often rises to a poetic quality, innovates with the use of on-stage live music, it remains set in Russia in the past, which makes it a powerful period piece with anachronistic treatment of the central theme of sexual jealousy. In contrast, Reid’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s novella with a similar theme actualizes and relocates the original, transferring it to Ireland in the present time, and through the changes introduced in the plot and character, the playwright creates a credible psychological landscape for twenty-first-century audiences. (ZsCs)

• Rewriting History: Narrative Resistance and Poetic Justice in Martin McDonagh’s A Very Very Very Dark Matter

  José Lanters

  Views:

  180

  Martin McDonagh’s A Very Very Very Dark Matter (2018) explores how the stories of exploited people have been written out of history. The play includes several storytellers, and it both replicates and deviates from the details of numerous existing narratives, including McDonagh’s own plays. Set in 1857, the play imagines that Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales were written by a pygmy woman from the Belgian Congo who has traveled back in time; Hans calls her Marjory and keeps her in a box in his attic. Eventually Marjory writes herself out of the box and departs for Africa to prevent the colonization of her people. Dark Matter compels us to question the narratives about the past that have become embedded in our culture and to uncover the facts that official accounts have altered or suppressed; rewriting history is acceptable only in imaginative storytelling, as an act of poetic justice. (JL)

• The Translation of Contemporary Drama: McCafferty’s Quietly on the Italian Stage

  Monica Randaccio

  Views:

  58

  This article explores how spatial and temporal changes are considered as key features by both drama translator scholars and translation theorists and invites reflection on translation in general and the reception of contemporary Irish drama abroad. The comparison of Owen McCafferty’s Quietly and its Italian version demonstrates how the translation/adaptation, staging, and reception of the play in Italy must be considered against the contemporary backdrop of globalization. (MR)