Plays by Women in Ireland: Feminist Theatres of Freedom and Resistance is being launched at the Abbey Theatre Dublin on the 1st July at 2:30pm. The book will be launched by Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College Dublin.

This anthology provides access to neglected theatrical work and broadens our understanding of the history of Irish theatre as well as the vital role of women within it. The introduction places these plays in dialogue with one another as well as within the national context of the repealing of women’s rights during the Irish Free State years.

These are plays by authors including Mary Manning, Dorothy Macardle, Mary Devenport O’Neill, Kate O’Brien and Margaret O’Leary, which are difficult to access, but which are increasingly visible in Irish theatre scholarship. This unique collection places the playwrights in dialogue to form a tradition of women’s theatrical work that challenges the male-dominated literary canon of Irish theatre, as well as enriching the body of women’s theatrical work in the Anglophone world during the interwar years.

Includes the plays:
Kate O’Brien – Distinguished Villa (1926)
Margaret O’Leary – The Woman (1929)
Mary Manning – Youth’s the Season (1931)
Dorothy Macardle – Witch’s Brew (1931)
Mary Devenport O’Neill – Bluebeard (1933)

The collection is edited by Lisa Fitzpatrick & Shonagh Hill.