Cultural Convergence The Dublin Gate Theatre, 1928–1960 Edited by Ondřej Pilný · Ruud van den Beuken · Ian R. Walsh Cultural Convergence “This well-organised volume makes a notable contribution to our understanding of Irish theatre studies and Irish modernist studies more broadly. The essays are written by a diverse range of leading scholars who outline the outstanding cultural importance of the Dublin Gate Theatre, both in terms of its national significance and in terms of its function as a hub of international engagement.” —Professor James Moran, University of Nottingham, UK “The consistently outstanding contributions to this illuminating and cohesive collection demonstrate that, for Gate Theatre founders Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir and their collaborators, the limits of the imagination lay well beyond Ireland’s borders. Individually and collectively, the contribu- tors to this volume unravel the intricate connections, both personal and artistic, linking the theatre’s directors, designers, and practitioners to Britain, Europe, and beyond; they examine the development and staging of domestic plays written in either English or Irish; and they trace across national boundaries the complex textual and production history of foreign dramas performed in translation. In addition to examining a broad spectrum of intercultural and transnational influ- ences and perspectives, these frequently groundbreaking essays also reveal the extent to which the early Gate Theatre was a cosmopolitan, progressive, and inclusive space that recognized and valued women’s voices and queer forms of expression.” —Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, USA “Cultural Convergence is a book for which we have been waiting, not just in Irish theatre history, but in Irish cultural studies more widely. By drawing on fresh archival sources to show us that Dublin’s Gate Theatre was not simply the Irish home of stage modernism, or a playpen for its founders, this book shows us that the ground for the globalised, multicultural Ireland of the twenty-first century had been prepared much earlier. It is thus not just good theatre history; it is an important intervention in our present.” —Professor Chris Morash, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland “This exciting collection pushes our understanding of the Gate Theatre and its impact miles ahead of where it has stood for decades. By asking new questions about the cosmopolitanism the Gate espoused, this study exposes the complex interactions among genres, media, languages, political affiliations, and identities both personal and collective that shaped the theatre. These carefully researched and thoughtfully argued accounts of cultural convergence further enhance the recent array of strong critical work on the Gate, as well as providing an important model for rigorous Irish theatre historiography in the global moment.” —Professor Paige Reynolds, College of the Holy Cross, USA Ondˇrej Pilný · Ruud van den Beuken · Ian R. Walsh Editors Cultural Convergence The Dublin Gate Theatre, 1928–1960 Editors Ondˇrej Pilný Ruud van den Beuken Charles University Radboud University Nijmegen Prague, Czech Republic Nijmegen, The Netherlands Ian R. Walsh National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland ISBN 978-3-030-57561-8 ISBN 978-3-030-57562-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57562-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Production photo from W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower, 1942, directed by Hilton Edwards and starring Micheál mac Liammóir. Reprinted by permission of the Edwards—mac Liammóir Estate. Copyright of the Edwards—mac Liammóir Estate. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements The editors of this book would like to thank Prof. Marguérite Corporaal of Radboud University Nijmegen and Prof. Patrick Lonergan of the National University of Ireland, Galway, co-directors of the Gate Theatre Research Network, for their leadership and support. We are grateful to the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for an Internationalisation in the Humanities grant (236-40- 001/3789) in support of establishing ‘The Gate Theatre Research Network: Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Exchange and Identity Forma- tion’ and funding its activities and meetings, and to Radboud Univer- sity Nijmegen, the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Charles University, Prague for co-funding the project. We are much obliged to Eileen Srebernik and Jack Heeney at Palgrave Macmillan for their commitment to and assistance with bringing this book to publication, to Ricardo Reitsma for helping out with the final stages of copy editing, and to Jiˇrina Popelíková for assistance with the permissions for the use of third-party material. We are particularly thankful to the anonymous readers for their carefully considered comments, which have been extremely useful in finalizing the structure of the book. A special note of thanks is due to Scott Krafft, Jason Nargis, and Nick Munagian of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collec- tions at Northwestern University, for the meticulous care with which they manage the Gate Theatre Archive, their assistance with the research of numerous contributors to this volume, and for providing scans of v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS photographs used herein. Gratitude is due also to Hanuš Jordán of the National Museum in Prague for providing further photographic material, and to Barry Houlihan of the James Hardiman Library at NUI Galway for assistance with research in the Gate Theatre Digital Archive. Last but not least, we are grateful to Michael Travers, Executor of the Edwards—mac Liammóir Estate, for granting the permission to reprint materials from the Gate Theatre Archive. The cover image and Figures 2.1–2.5, 5.2, 6.2, 6.3, 6.6, 6.7, 7.1, 7.3–7.6, 8.1–8.4 and 8.6 are reproduced by permission of the Edwards— mac Liammóir Estate and courtesy of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University. Copyright of the Edwards—mac Liammóir Estate. Figures 6.1, 6.4 and 6.5 are reproduced courtesy of the Theatre Department of the National Museum in Prague. Extracts from the unpublished manuscript by Elizabeth Sprigge, ‘L’Id- iote Illuminée: The Life and Writing of Velona Pilcher’, in Chapter 5 are quoted by permission of Elizabeth Lumley-Smith. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and obtain permission to reproduce all third-party material. The editors apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if noti- fied of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. This book was supported by the European Regional Development Fund Project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/ 0000734). Contents 1 Introduction: Cultural Convergence at Dublin’s Gate Theatre 1 Ondˇrej Pilný, Ruud van den Beuken, and Ian R. Walsh 2 The Internationalist Dramaturgy of Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir 15 Joan FitzPatrick Dean and Radvan Markus 3 Gearóid Ó Lochlainn: The Gate Theatre’s Other Irish-Speaking Founder 47 Pádraig Ó Siadhail 4 The Transnational Roots of Key Figures from the Early Years of the Gate Theatre, Dublin 75 DavidClareandNicolaMorris 5 The Other Gates: Anglo-American Influences on and from Dublin 107 Charlotte Purkis vii viii CONTENTS 6 The Brothers Capekˇ at the Gate: R.U.R. and The Insect Play 141 Ondˇrej Pilný 7 Kismet: Hollywood, Orientalism and the Design Language of Padraic Colum’s Mogu of the Desert 175 Elaine Sisson 8 Prussian Discipline and Lesbian Vulnerability: Christa Winsloe’s Children in Uniform at the Gate 193 Yvonne Ivory 9 ‘We Belong to the World’: Christine Longford’s War Plays During Irish Neutrality 217 Erin Grogan Index 237 Notes on Contributors David Clare is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at Mary Immac- ulate College, University of Limerick. He previously held two Irish Research Council-funded postdoctoral fellowships based at NUI Galway’s Moore Institute. Dr Clare’s books include the monograph Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (Palgrave, 2016) and the edited collection The Gate Theatre, Dublin: Inspiration and Craft (Carysfort/Peter Lang, 2018), and past publications have explored Gate productions of work by Oliver Goldsmith, Mary Manning, Christine Longford, Maura Laverty, Samuel Beckett and Mark O’Rowe.