James Cousins: The Rules Of 20th Century Irish Theatre

Irish culture is so rich and vast, especially Irish theatre. 400 years of rich theatre history led me to choose writing my research paper over a historical document with the rules of 20th century Irish theatre written upon it along with a political Irish playbill. There are many things listed in these primary sources that stand the test of time, and many that do not. My main focus is to explain how these documents have influenced theatre today, and what practices we could potentially bring back to life. This document, written by James Cousins, contains information written by and for a society called “The Theatre of Ireland.” The main object of the society is to assist in the creation of a National Theatre for Ireland and to produce plays …show more content…
Their main objective can also be placed in modern time for any theatre company across the globe. For instance, Theatre Lawrence has a mission statement that reads, “Theatre Lawrence partners with volunteers to create and deliver extraordinary theatre and education programs that engage community members of all ages and backgrounds as audience members and participants.” So you can see, this objective still applies to the 21st century. Another rule that has proved to last is, “ The Committee shall consider all plays sent in to the society for production; and their decision to acceptance or rejection shall be final. No play shall be put in rehearsal or performed until it has been passed by the Committee.” We practice this process here at the University of Kansas, but the difference between then in now is that there is a separation between theatre and the state. Theatre companies had a hard time competing with the “political interests of the state” and countering church (Pilkington). The Irish were expected to conform to the political interests of the state and the moral interests of the church, so they were forced to find a way to do this without …show more content…
This practice isn’t seen today because we have directors that are paid to create their own vision. But, what if it was still in practice? The pros of this could be that actors would play the scripts as the author intended it, and could have a lot of their questions answered due to the author’s extensive knowledge of their own piece. The cons would be that the stage manager couldn’t give full attention to both managing and directing. Stage managers today have to take on a lot of responsibility and adding on another one would cause them an immense amount of stress. Nobody can be sure about how things would turn out, but it is intriguing to think of what would happen if we implemented this practice