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Multiple productions and the international successes of plays like The Weir have led to Conor McPherson being regarded by many as one of the finest writers of his generation. McPherson has also been hugely prolific as a theatre director, as a screenwriter and film director, garnering many awards in these different roles.
In this collection of essays, commentators from around the world address the substantial range of McPherson's output to date in theatre and film, a body of work written primarily during and in the aftermath of Ireland's Celtic Tiger period. These critics approach the work in challenging and dynamic ways, considering the crucial issues of morality, the rupturing of the real, storytelling, and the significance of space, violence and gender. Explicit considerations are given to comedy and humour, and to theatrical form, especially that of the monologue and to the ways that the otherworldly, the unconscious and the supernatural are accommodated dramaturgically, with frequent emphasis placed on the specific aspects of performance in both theatre and film.
List of contents
CONTENTS: Anthony Roche: The Early Years - Sara Keating: The Geography of Conor McPherson's Plays: The City as Salvation or Hell? - Clare Wallace: The Art of Disclosure, the Ethics of Monologue in Conor McPherson's Drama: St. Nicholas, This Lime Tree Bower and Port Authority - Lisa Fitzpatrick: Representing Sexual Violence in the Early Plays of Conor McPherson - Susanne Colleary: Conor McPherson's St. Nicholas: A Study in Comic Anguish - Kevin Wallace: «shame shame shame»: Masculinity, Intimacy and Narrative in Conor McPherson's Shining City - Emilie Pine: «This is what I need you to do to make it right»: Conor McPherson's I Went Down - Kevin Kerrane: The Buoyancy of Conor McPherson's Saltwater - Carmen Szabo: Issues of Narrative, Storytelling and Performance in Conor McPherson's The Actors - Ian R. Walsh: Mysterium Tremens: Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol - P.J. Mathews: The «Sweet Smell» of the Celtic Tiger: Elegy and Critique in Conor McPherson's The Weir - Rhona Trench: The Measure of a Pub Spirit in Conor McPherson's The Weir - Ashley Taggart: «Stumbling around in the light»: Conor McPherson's partial eclipse - Christopher Murray: The Supernatural in Conor McPherson's The Seafarer and The Birds - Eric Weitz: The Gravity of Humour in Samuel Beckett's Endgame and Conor McPherson's The Seafarer - Audrey McNamara: Conor McPherson's The Seafarer: Male Pattern Blindness - Mária Kurdi: Interview with Pál Göttinger - Eamonn Jordan: Para-Normal Views/Para-Gothic Activities in Conor McPherson's The Veil - Noelia Ruiz: Interview with Conor McPherson.
