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DISSERTATION Final “We've All To Grow Old”: Representations of Aging as Reflections of Cultural Change on the Celtic Tiger Irish Stage DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Christopher Austin Hill B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Theatre History, Literature, Criticism The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Chair: Dr. Joy Reilly Dr. Jennifer Schlueter Dr. Ray Cashman Copyright by Christopher Austin Hill 2013 Abstract This dissertation discusses the work of four Irish playwrights: Sebastian Barry, Marina Carr, Conor McPherson, and Elaine Murphy. Specifically, it investigates the inclusion, by these playwrights, of “elderly” characters in their plays written between 1995 and 2010—a period of economic and cultural change known as the “Celtic Tiger.” This study argues that the way that aging and senescence—defined jointly as the process of aging and as the state of being “aged”—are represented on stage reveals a broader cultural negotiation of “new” and “old” Ireland. Into their representations of “old” characters, the playwrights discussed here have embedded a reflection of destabilized cultural narratives, which resulted from intense societal change in Ireland. ii Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my wife Allison and to my amazing children. Without them, this work would have been impossible. Their unfailing support and love were a constant force of strength, which drove me throughout my research. Thank you—I love you. iii Acknowledgments There are many people who I wish to thank, and far too little space in which to do it. First, my most heartfelt thanks to Dr. Joy Reilly for her unbounded support and encouragement. Thanks also to Dr. Jennifer Schlueter for her wonderful help and guidance, and to Dr. Ray Cashman for his encyclopedic advice, and for taking me to Ireland. Thank you to my parents, Denis and Charlene Hill who taught me about the power of goal-setting and whose support of me never wavered. Thanks to them, also, for their help in getting me to Ireland for research. Thank you to those who have been forced to help me fight through this material, including Jill Summerville, Allison Brogan, Elizabeth Harelik, Damian Bowerman, and Dr. Nicholas Dekker at The Ohio State University, and Cormac O’Brien at University College Dublin. Finally, thank you to the faculty and students in The Department of Theatre who have become such an important part of my life, your friendship and support means so much. iv Vita September 14, 1977 ........................ Born 2008 ............................................... B.A. Theatre, University of Utah 2008 ............................................... B.A. Speech Communication, University of Utah 2010 ............................................... M.A. Theatre Studies, The Ohio State University 2008 to present .............................. Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Theatre, The Ohio State University Field of Study Theatre Studies v Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………….. ii Dedication……………………………………………………………….. iii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………… iv Vita………………………………………………………………………… v Introduction……………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 1: The Storytellers: ‘Stars’ and ‘Seanchaithe’ of the Celtic Tiger…………..……… 21 Chapter 2: The Good Old Days?: Rethinking the Story of the Past ………………………………. 53 Chapter 3: “I’m Old. I’ll Die If I Don’t Drink This”: Alcohol, Aging, and Affluence,…………………………………… 80 Chapter 4: “The Old Hag, The Irish Mammy, and the Poor Old Woman………………………………………… 114 Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 157 Bibliography……………………………………………………………. 175 Appendix A: Synopses of Major Plays…..………………………… 183 vi Introduction Between 1990 and 2010 Ireland underwent a dramatic paradigm shift. This shift has centers around periods of tremendous economic growth—a surge known to economists as the “Celtic Tiger.” Partially as a result of the Celtic Tiger, there has been a dynamic movement away from the agrarian roots of Irish culture, and towards an urban and modern Ireland. In conjunction with this urbanization, the Catholic Church’s hold over the Irish people waned, in part due to emerging reports of decades of sex abuses by clergy. The young Irish, who in the United States of America we would call “Generation X” and the “Millennials,” have become further disenchanted with the Church, detached from their rural heritage, and even suspicious of alcohol as a means of escape. Many Irish historians and social critics—such as Ivana Bacik, Fintan O’Toole, and Rob Norton—regard this twenty-first century Ireland as “New Ireland.” As the Tiger progressed, a palpable tension developed between this changed conception of Irishness and the traditions and attitudes that preceded it. This dissertation explores the theatrical manifestations of this tension in the most literal sense—in the representations of aging, and of 1 “elderly” characters on stage. Through an examination of a selection of plays written, produced, and published between 1995 and 2010, ranging from the earliest days of the Celtic Tiger to just after the economic crash that ended it, the study argues that the way that aging and senescence— defined jointly as the process of aging and as the state of being “aged”— are represented on stage reveals a broader cultural negotiation of “new” and “old” Ireland. Into their representations of “old” characters, the playwrights discussed here—Sebastian Barry, Marina Carr, Conor McPherson, and Elaine Murphy, all under 50 when the plays were written—have embedded a reflection of destabilized cultural narratives which resulted from intense societal change in Ireland. There are a number of reasons that this study is significant at this time. As Ireland struggles to overcome the tremendous financial collapse provoked by the Celtic Tiger, understanding the time period and the cultural values that pervaded it, are of paramount importance. Studies such as mine, which explore the Celtic Tiger as a historical and finite time period, will contribute to the discussion of how Ireland came to be in the position that it currently finds itself. To date, there have been relatively few books or articles published focusing solely on what was happening on stage during the Celtic Tiger. Many of the most influential books on Irish drama, including Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland (1996), were published before the Tiger caught hold. Others, such as Christopher Morash’s A History of Irish Theatre 2 1601-2000 (2002), do not account for the Celtic Tiger as a discrete time period, and therefore do not delve into the resultant cultural conditions that color the dramatic literature. The books that do discuss drama during the Celtic Tiger, such as Patrick Lonergan’s Theatre And Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era (2009) and Eamonn Jordan’s Dissident Dramaturgies (2010), have been invaluable resources in my study, even though our emphases are not the same—these books look more comprehensively at trends across Celtic Tiger Irish drama. Where this work diverges from the current literature is in its analytical framework. Rather than seeking to define broad tendencies in Irish drama as Lonergan and Jordan do, or exploring the work of an individual playwright as in Lillian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan’s edited volume The Theatre of Conor McPherson: ‘Right Beside the Beyond’ (2012), this study identifies a single literary trope—the inclusion of “elderly” characters in plays—and attempts to explain it. Here, aging is used as a lens for analysis, but it should be noted that this dissertation is not a study in literary gerontology. This study does not seek to explore the cultural meaning of age in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger. Instead, it focuses on the ways that aged characters are used to reflect other meanings. I am dealing as much with appropriations of aging as with representations of it. This work is fundamentally one of literary criticism. My study will look at the Celtic Tiger period from an historiographical standpoint, 3 attempting to reveal and extrapolate from the plays the cultural narratives which are being complicated through the aged characters. Throughout, the study considers the origins of the narratives that are being discussed, and unpack the reasons that they found renewed significance during the Celtic Tiger—that is to say, these plays are read both diachronically and synchronically. A frequent theme is the connection between the representations in the plays and the folkloric traditions of Ireland. Through this approach, this dissertation attempts to reveal a picture of Celtic Tiger Ireland—a snapshot of the culture as a whole—as presented within the plays. The Celtic Tiger as Historical Period The primary relationship between all of the texts that are discussed, other than that they all feature “aged” characters, is the fact that they were all written in Ireland, about Irish characters, by Irish playwrights, and between 1995 and 2010. The labeling of these plays as representative of a single historical period is, of course, somewhat problematic. In Thomas Postlewait’s Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography (2009) he argues: The period concept is our way of freezing a segment of time and giving it an identity. We must remember, though, that the concept is located within us, not within history itself. In short, it is a classification that we create and then project onto the past. (157) 4 With this in mind, the theatre historian must take
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