Gwen Kingston on the "Irish National Theatre"

Gwen Kingston, Devon Roe and Cari Wieland at the Abbey, Ireland's National Theatre, to see Pygmalion on June 7, 2011

The central questions of the role of an Irish National Theatre, as laid out by the various essayists we have encountered in class, revolve around the inevitable tensions between the integrity of the ideals of the Irish Nationalist movement and the need for good quality and widely accessible productions. 

Many of these writers speak to the need for the Irish National Theatre to emerge organically from the daily life and historical culture of Ireland. Frank J. Fay particularly stresses the importance of writing nationalist dramatic texts in the Irish language. In his essay An Irish National Theatre he writes, “My notion of an Irish National Theatre is that it ought to be the nursery of an Irish dramatic literature…For myself, I must say that I cannot conceive it possible to achieve this except through the medium of the Irish language”(Harrington 415).  Fay contends that writing in the Irish language is a crucial element for any dramatic text with nationalist aspirations. His view of the role of an Irish National Theatre necessarily involves the revival and utilization of the native language of Ireland, rather than the imposed language of its colonizers. It is easy to see that a text which frames itself in the language of the colonizing force has already made grave concessions to the very enemy it hopes to challenge.  However, the practical implications of this requirement are less straightforward. English was a much more widely spoken language and therefore accessible to a broader audience. Furthermore, some of the most accomplished Irish-born playwrights were writing in English.  Even Cathleen ni Houlihan, Yeats’ seminal nationalist work, was written and published in English. Writing the plays in English packaged them for greater consumption, but risked blunting the original aims of the Irish Nationalist movement.

Similarly there arose the question of who would act in the plays once written. Ireland had no stock of trained professional actors from which to draw. All trained actors were English, and so again there existed a friction between the ideals of the movement and the quality of the productions. The choice had to be made whether to use amateur Irish actors, or professional British actors whose portrayals of Irish characters would be vulnerable to the very kinds of misrepresentations and stereotypes an Irish National Theatre would strive to avoid. Fay argued that, “…the first actors of an Irish National Theatre must be amateurs…”(Harrington 416). It seemed to him essential that the performers of such nationalist texts come out of the native population. However, he admits the difficulty saying that in Ireland “…there exists a scathing contempt for the ‘play-actor’; he is not considered respectable, and we have long been suffering from an acute attack of respectability”(Harrington 416). Indeed the premiere performance of Countess Cathleen featured English actors and was rehearsed in London(Harrington 407). This makes for complex questions surrounding the nature of the actual bodies onstage, purporting to represent a culture and a nation to which they do not actually belong, and the implications of nationalistic Irish texts being mediated through the filter of the English professional, commercial theatre.

Across all of these texts there seems a clear consensus that the proper role for a national theatre must be looked for outside the commercial realm. Both Fay and W. B. Yeats directly reject the commercial theatre model as an appropriate template for an Irish National Theatre. Fay insists, “Let us keep cursed mercantilism at arm’s length. It pollutes everything it touches”(Harrington 417), and Yeats states, “I would sooner our theatre failed through the indifference or hostility of our audiences than gained an immense popularity by any loss of freedom" (Harrington 414). Both identify commercial constraints as the enemy of meaningful art. The statement of purpose presented to us by Lady Gregory speaks of the vital importance of “…that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, and without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed”(Harrington 402). All three recognize that the need to turn a profit feels fundamentally incompatible with the goals of a national theatre.

Yeats, perhaps most clearly, goes on to define a good nationalist as, “…one who is ready to give up a good deal that he may preserve to his country whatever part of her possessions he is best fitted to guard”(Harrington 414). This philosophy of sacrifice can readily be applied to this model of a new national theatre, for such an attempt is not a neutral undertaking. Since neither popularity, nor commercial gain can serve as the standard of success, those intent on pursuing the project must do so at their own financial and social risk. Cathleen ni Houlihan strongly reflects these tenets of self-sacrifice and the rejection of personal and monetary property. Michael’s departure at the end is representative of a form of patriotism in which nation takes president over family and other forms of community, and the domestic is abandoned for the militaristic. His rejection of his family’s land and his fiancé’s dowry parallels this overarching rejection of the personal and the commercial in favor of the public and the patriotic. Ultimately the role of the national theatre seems to be: not something from which one profits, but to which one sacrifices that others may profit.