A Plurality of Identities: Ulster Protestantism in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama
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A Plurality of Identities: Ulster Protestantism in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama Georgia Macbeth A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Theatre, Film and Dance University of New South Wales August 1999 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 4 Introduction A Confluence of History, Myth and Identity 5 Part One: Protestant as Planter Chapter One Field Day Theatre Company: a Northern Nationalist Vision 57 Part Two: Protestant Diversity Chapter Two History as Identity: Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness 119 Chapter Three Centres and Peripheries: the Ulster Protestant as Irish and British 152 Chapter Four The Angst of the Middle Classes: Graham Reid, Bill Morrison and Robin Glendinning 181 Chapter Five Charabanc Theatre Company 204 Chapter Six Christina Reid: the Ulster Protestant Female 238 Chapter Seven Gary Mitchell: a New Protestant Voice? 256 Conclusion 275 Bibliography 284 2 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the insight and guidance of Jim Davis. Special thanks should also go to Mum, Dad, Will and the rest of my family and friends for their unwavering encouragement and support. Specific thanks to Eleanor Methven for inspiration, Ophelia Byrne and Maelíosa Stafford for invaluable assistance, Vi, Reggie, Nell and Dan for their hospitality, and Bill Morrison for lunch in Liverpool. Finally, and with much love, I thank Danny. 3 Abstract This thesis examines the ways in which Ulster Protestant identity has been explored in contemporary Northern Irish drama. The insecurity of the political and cultural status of Ulster Protestants from the Home Rule Crises up until Partition led to the construction and maintenance of a distinct and unified Ulster Protestant identity. This identity was defined by concepts such as loyalty, industriousness and ‘Britishness’. It was also defined by a perceived opposite – the Catholicism, disloyalty and ‘ of the Republic. When the Orange State began to fragment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so did notions of this singular Ulster Protestant identity. With the onset of the Troubles in 1969 came a parallel questioning and subversion of this identity in Northern Irish drama. This was a process which started with Sam Thompson’s Over the Bridge in 1960, but which began in earnest with Stewart Parker’s Spokesong in 1975. This thesis examines Parker’s approach and subsequent approaches by other dramatists to the question of Ulster Protestant identity. It begins with the antithetical pronouncements of Field Day Theatre Company, which were based in an inherently Northern Nationalist ideology. Here, the Ulster Protestant community was largely ignored or essentialised. Against this Northern Nationalist ideology represented by Field Day have come broadly revisionist approaches, reflecting the broader cultural context of this thesis. Ulster Protestant identity has been explored through issues of history and myth, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. More recent explorations of Ulster Protestantism have also added to this diversity by presenting the little acknowledged viewpoint of extreme loyalism. Dramatists examined in this thesis include Stewart Parker, Christina Reid, Frank McGuinness, Bill Morrison, Ron Hutchinson, Marie Jones, Graham Reid, Robin Glendinning and Gary Mitchell. The work of Charabanc Theatre Company is also discussed. What results from their efforts is a diverse and complex Ulster Protestant community. This thesis argues that the concept of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, defined by its loyalty and Britishness, is fragmented, leading to a plurality of Ulster Protestant identities. 4 Introduction A Confluence of History, Myth and Identity The issue of Ulster Protestant identity has been frequently explored on Northern Irish stages and changing conceptions of this identity have been reflected in the changing ways in which it has been presented on stage. This thesis aims to trace this process, showing how contemporary Northern Irish drama has mirrored contemporary views about Ulster Protestantism from both internal and external perspectives. Since the onset of the current Troubles1, the Northern Irish majority has experienced a drastic shift – from a position of security to one of insecurity, from belonging to dispossession and ultimately from the conception of a singular and stable Ulster Protestant identity to the recognition of a plurality of Protestant identities. I aim to show how these shifts have been explored in contemporary Northern Irish drama, starting with an examination of the issues and background which frame my argument. Theatre in Northern Ireland Before 1969 In Northern Irish drama prior to 1969 we can see both the assertion of an identity independent of Britain and Ireland and a converse assertion of the inherent Britishness of the Ulster Protestant. Theatre in the North was both parochial and provincial in outlook, mirroring contemporary Ulster Protestant confusion. In 1902 two Ulster men, Bulmer Hobson and David Parkhill, 1 In using the term ‘current Troubles’, I am referring to the period since the civil unrest of 1969. 1 established a Northern branch of the Irish National Literary Theatre. The ethos behind their efforts was Nationalist. Both Hobson and Parkhill were representatives of the Protestant National Association (‘one of the many scions of national enthusiasm in the North’2) and firm believers in the spirit of the United Irishmen3. They believed that Ulster should play its part in the Irish Revival. Yet they did not have the blessing of WB Yeats and the Irish Literary Theatre, and, after rejection from Dublin, they renamed themselves the Ulster Literary Theatre (ULT). It was their second season of plays early in 1904 which highlighted the need for more than just a nominal break from their southern co-practitioners. Productions of Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houlihan along with AE (George Russell)’s Deidre received much poorer houses than expected. Gerald Macnamara recorded that the ‘Belfast public were not taken by Cathleen Ni Houlihan’: ‘Ninety-nine per cent of the population had never heard of the lady – and cared less; in fact someone in the audience said that the show was going “rightly” till she came on’4. Here we see the first drama-related expressions of a distinctive ‘ Also a representative of this new move towards independence was the ULT’s literary review – Uladh. The review’s first editorial asserted the distinctiveness of the Ulster voice, contrasting it directly with that of the South: Dreamer, mystic, symbolist, Gaelic poet and propagandist have all spoken on the Dublin stage, and a fairly defined local school has been inaugurated. We in Belfast and Ulster also wish to set up a school; but there will be a difference... At present we can only say that our 2 Hagal Mengel, Sam Thompson and Modern Drama in Ulster (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1986), 14. 3 Sam Hanna Bell, The Theatre in Ulster: A Survey of the Dramatic Movement in Ulster from 1902 until the Present Day (London: Gill and Macmillan, 1972), 2. 4 Gerald Macnamara, as quoted in Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, 3-4. 2 talent is more satiric than poetic... we shall... attain to something unique in Ulster, smacking of the soil, the winds on the uplands, the north coast, the sun and the rain, and the long winter evenings5. ‘Satire’ formed the base for much of the ULT’s work and this distinction between ‘satiric’ and ‘poetic’ lingers up to the present day, with remnants left in the differences between Ulster Protestant and Irish Catholic drama, between the work of a writer such as Stewart Parker and that of Brian Friel. What these initial years of the ULT illustrate is the effort to assert cultural independence and it is in these efforts that their longer term significance lies. For the first time, Ulster characters, speaking Ulster dialect, appeared on stage across the province. Worthy of note from this early period were Rutherford Mayne’s The Drone (1908)6, Lewis Purcell’s and Gerald Macnamara’s (alias Harry C. Morrow’s) Suzanne and the Sovereigns (1907), and Gerald Macnamara’s 1912 work, Thompson in Tir-na-n’Og. The last work of this list was characteristic of the ULT’s early work both in form and content. Thompson in Tir-na-n’Og was a one-act work following a central character, Andy Thompson. Thompson is an Ulster Protestant who, after an accident with his gun during a mock battle, finds himself ‘complete with Orange sash and bowler hat, in the Land of Eternal Youth among the heroes of Irish myth’7. Here we have a humorous meeting of opposing sides underpinned by the view that to laugh at sectarianism was to reject and undermine its potency. The importance of all of this early work was its grounding in the province, particularly in its depiction of urban, distinctly Belfast life. Specifically written for and directed at audiences in Ulster, this 5 WB Reynolds, ‘Editorial’, Uladh (1 November 1904), as quoted in Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, 7. 6 Mayne’s play remains frequently performed in amateur circles – an Ulster ‘classic’. 7 Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, 42. 3 early ULT work broke away from Dublin, rejecting the plays of the Irish Literary Theatre in favour of local writers. In this it took Ulster cultural distinctiveness much further than Uladh. Up until the 1960s, various theatre companies were established and dissolved, including the Belfast Repertory Company (otherwise known as The Empire Players), the Ulster Group Theatre (formed in 1949 by an amalgamation of the Ulster Theatre, Jewish Institute Dramatic Society and the Northern Irish Players), the Belfast Arts and the Lyric Players Theatre (formed in 1951 and still in existence today)8. However, the progress of Northern Irish drama is best illuminated through examination of two particular writers – St John Ervine and Sam Thompson. The contrast between the work of these two men highlights the shift which occurred, as conflict loomed in the North, from a traditional conception of Ulster Protestant identity as expressed in Ervine’s work to a fragmented and diverse portrait of Ulster Protestantism such as is depicted in the work of Sam Thompson.