Here, now, listen, I'll tell you a tale . . . Daffodils are in bloom as dawn breaks over the foothills of Ballycumber, ushering in hope for a new day and stirring the ghosts of a past fraught with sorrow, anguish and emptiness. In search of advice, young Evans Stafford calls at the home of friend and strong-minded traditionalist, Nicholas Farquhar. The following day, as Farquhar learns the devastating consequences of this meeting, he discovers that his memories and words are governed by a buried history; a force far greater than himself. Sebastian Barry's Tales of Ballycumber premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in September 2009.

Gerry Adams has disguised himself as a newborn baby and successfully infiltrated my family home. Eric Miller is a Belfast Loyalist. He believes his five-week old granddaughter is Gerry Adams. His family keep telling him to stop living in the past and fighting old battles that nobody cares about anymore, but his cultural heritage is under siege. He must act. David Ireland's black comedy takes one man's identity crisis to the limits as he uncovers the modern day complexity of Ulster Loyalism. Cyprus Avenue was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 2016, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, The MAC in Belfast and The Public Theater in New York.

This book offers a study of the literary marketplace in the early 2000s. Focusing on the Man Booker Prize and its impact on a novel's media attention, Anna Auguscik analyses the mechanisms by which the Prize both recognises books that trigger debates and itself becomes the object of such debates. Based on case studies of six novels (by Aravind Adiga, Margaret Atwood, Sebastian Barry, Mark Haddon, DBC Pierre, Zadie Smith) and their attention profiles, this work describes the Booker as a 'problem-driven attention-generating mechanism', the influence of which can only be understood in relation to other participants in literary interaction.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre provides the single most comprehensive survey of the field to be found in a single volume. Drawing on more than forty contributors from around the world, the book addresses a full range of topics relating to modern Irish theatre from the late nineteenth-century to the most recent works of postdramatic devised theatre. Ireland has long had an importance in the world of theatre out of all proportion to the size of the country, and has been home to four Nobel Laureates (Yeats, Shaw, and Beckett; Seamus Heaney, while primarily a poet, also wrote for the stage). This collection begins with the influence of melodrama, and looks at arguably the first modern Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, before moving into a series of considerations of the Abbey Theatre, and Irish modernism. Arranged chronologically, it explores areas such as women in theatre, Irish-language theatre, and alternative theatres, before reaching the major writers of more recent Irish theatre, including Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, and their successors. There are also individual chapters focusing on Beckett and Shaw, as well as a series of chapters looking at design, acting, and theatre architecture. The book concludes with an extended survey of the critical literature on the field. In each chapter, the author does not simply rehearse accepted wisdom; all of the contributors push the boundaries of their respective fields, so that each chapter is a significant contribution to scholarship in its own right.

This city is changing. Different world from when I was a boy. I came over here when I wasn't much taller than you are now. Different world. You know what getting old is? Getting old is slowly losing everything that you're familiar with. Man has just set foot on the moon. The streets of Brooklyn are tense. The Irish Mafia is desperately trying to hold on to their power and more importantly their identity. After all, they built these streets. In this edgy new story, relationships between family, friends and enemies are ultimately challenged. Hold tight as Drum Belly casts you into New York City's deep and dark underworld.

The essays in the present volume are dedicated and written in tribute to Professor Mária Kurdi upon celebrating her 70th birthday. As a multifaceted scholar, Mária is known for her enduring contribution to the wide field of literary studies, her main research areas being modern American and British drama, drama theory, and comparative literary studies. An internationally renowned scholar of modern Irish literature and culture, she is also well known for the many ways in which she has promoted Irish studies in Hungary. This is the third volume in the SPECHEL e-ditions series.

A thorough and insightful study of the work of twenty-five important Irish playwrights.

Vronsky What were you thinking about with your head stuck to the watering can? Anna Oh, the same, always the same. I was thinking about my happiness and about my unhappiness.Russia is changing. Rules have been broken. Chaos is looming. Families are falling apart. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is an examination of a country in the midst of extraordinary change. Through the impact of one woman's decision, it looks at the troubling cost of love on the human soul. Marina Carr brings a new perspective to Anna Karenina in her stage adaptation of this epic love story, which opened at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in December 2016.

Crowning Glory brings together the stories of seven women to explore the meaning of identity and beauty in today's world. This thought-provoking story is sure to make you laugh and cry, and will undoubtedly get you talking after the show.

Mogadishu, 1993. Paul is a Canadian photojournalist who is about to take a picture that will win him the Pulitzer Prize. Princeton, the present day, Dan is an American writer who is struggling to finish his play about ghosts. Both men live worlds apart but a chance encounter over the airwaves sparks an extraordinary friendship that sees them journey from some of the most dangerous places on earth to the depths of the human soul.Flying from Kabul to the Canadian High Arctic, The Body of an American sees two actors jump between more than thirty roles in an exhilarating new form of documentary drama. It urgently places these two men’s battles – both public and private –against a backdrop of some of the world’s most iconic images of war. The Body of an American is the recipient of the 2013 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. It also received the PEN Center USA Award for Drama and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and premiered at Portland Center Stage in 2012, directed by Bill Rauch. The play was the recipient of the McKnight National Residency & Commission from the Playwrights’ Center, as well as a Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship and a TCG Future Collaborations Grant. For further information and resources on this play, visit the Edward M Kennedy website: http://kennedyprize.columbia.edu/winners/2013/obrien/