Includes bibliographical references and index.

The mainstream : problematising and theorising / Shaun Richards -- The Theatre Royal : Dublin / Conor Doyle -- The politics of performance : theatre in and about Northern Ireland / Lisa Fitzpatrick -- The literary tradition in the history of modern Irish drama / Christopher Murray -- #WakingTheFeminists / Carole Quigly -- Live art in Ireland / Una Mannion -- Gestures of resistance : dance in 1990s Ireland / Finola Cronin -- Contemporary theatre in the Irish language / Máirtín Coilféir -- Theatre for young audiences in Ireland / Tom Maguire -- Performance in the community : amateur drama and community theatre / Elizabeth Howard -- Performing politics : queer theatre in Ireland, 1968-2017 / J. Paul Halferty -- Long flame in the hideous gale : the politics of Irish popular performance 1950-2000 / Susanne Colleary -- Other theatres / Chistopher Collins -- Independent theatre and new work / Gavin Kostick -- Funding, sponsorship and touring : causing a co-motions / Shelley Troupe -- New century theatre companies : from dramatist to collective / Cormac O'Brien -- The joyful mysteries of comedy / Bernard Farrell -- The Lambert Theatre and puppetry redefined / John McCormick -- Scenic transitions : from drama to experimental practices in Irish theatre / Noelia Ruiz -- Key moments and relationships : working with Pat Kinevane / Jim Cullerton -- Irish cinema and theatre : adapting to change / Ruth Barton -- Actor training in Ireland since 1965 / Rhona Trench -- Irish theatre : a designer's theatre / Siobhán O' Gorman -- Props to the Abbey prop man / Eimer Murphy -- Irish theatre : an actor's theatre / Bernadette Sweeney -- The figurative artist & ÚNA'N'ANU / Úna Kavanagh -- Irish theatre : a director's theatre / Ian R. Walsh -- In the wake of Olwen Fouéré's riverrun / Kellie Hughes -- Irish theatre : a writer's theatre / Nicholas Grene -- The making of Mainstream / Rosaleen McDonagh -- Participatory performance : spaces of creative negotiation / Kate McCarthy and Úna Kealy -- Other spaces (non-theatre spaces) / Charlotte McIvor -- Irish plays in other places : Royal Court, RSC, Washington and Berlin / Kevin Wallace -- Ripping up the original? : Fictional adaptations in contemporary Irish theatre / anne Fogarty -- Circuitous pathways : Marina Carr's labyrinth of feminist form in the US world premiere of Phaedra backwards / Melissa Sihra -- Being intercultural in Irish theatre and performance / Cathy Leeney -- Once upon a time in the life of Arambe : a personal reflection / Bisi Adigun -- Intercultural arrivals and encounters with trauma in contemporary Irish drama / Eva Urban -- Dramaturgical complicity : representing trauma in Brokentalkers' The blue boy / Kate Donoghue -- Between the city and the village : liminal spaces and ambivalent identities in contemporary Irish theatre / Brian Devaney -- Verse in twenty-first century Irish theatre / Kasia Lech -- The Gate Theatre on the road : O'Casey, Pinter and Friel / Mária Kurdi -- Festivals and curation : what is a festival for? / Willie White -- Interart relations and self-reflexivity in contemporary Irish drama / Csilla Bertha -- "Contempt of flesh" : adventures in the uncanny valley--Stacey Gregg's Override / Ashley Taggart -- The dance of affect in contemporary Irish dance theatre / Aoife McGrath -- Artistic vision and regional resistance : The gods are angry, Miss Kerr and the Red Kettle Theatre Company, a case study / Richard Hayes and Úna Kealy -- Cultural materialism and a class consciousness? / Erika Meyers -- The utilization of domestic space in the reflection of social and economic struggles of modern living in Conor McPherson's new translations of The nest / Maha Alatawi -- Audiences : immersive and participatory / Ciara L. Murphy -- Sounding affect in Pan Pan Theatre's adaptation of All that fall / Angela Butler -- Music in Irish theatre : the sound of the people / Ciara Fleming -- Sightings of comic dexterity / Eric Weitz -- Theatre as memory : acts of remembering in Irish theatre / Emilie Pine -- Staging a response : No escape and the rise of documentary theatre in Ireland / Luke Lamont -- Children of the revolution : 1916 in 2016 / James Moran -- Postfeminism and ethical issues in four post-Celtic Tiger Irish plays by women / Mária Kurdi -- Reflections on Bernard Shaw and the twenty-first century Dublin state / Audgrey McNamara -- "Endless art " : the contemporary archive of performance / Barry Houlihan.

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections - Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections - it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.