A rehearsal in the Abbey Theatre
Photo G. A. Duncan, Dublin.
Found in: Krause, David. Sean O'Casey and His World. Scribner, 1976.
The most important theatre in Ireland as O’Casey began his work was Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, so it is no surprise that O’Casey was interested in having his works produced there when he decided to become a playwright. At the time, the Abbey Theatre functioned as an endowed national theater for the new Irish Free State, having been founded in 1899 to represent the nation as discrete and artistically viable, and serving as a space for cultural-political movements, especially the nationalist movements (Clarke 211). The plays put on at the Abbey traditionally aimed for a realistic portrayal of the nation in contrast with the caricatures of the Irish found in many British plays. In reaction to that, many of the plays focused on forming “an image of a masculine, rational, patriarchal nation” (Clarke 211). To embrace realism in their portrayal of an (idealised) Irish culture, the productions were generally set in a home, with the cottages built to exact life dimensions and with authentic items used as props (211). These often included traditionally objects from Western Ireland in order to further highlight the authenticity of Irish culture and tradition on the stage (212). Plays also engaged with more political nationalism as they dramatized Irish mythology and later the Easter Rising itself, from a specific nationalist view such that the new Free State began subsidizing the theatre for its work (213-214).
As Amanda Clarke argues in her article ‘Keepin' a Home Together’: Performing Domestic Security in Sean O'Casey's ‘The Plough and the Stars,’” O’Casey fought back against some of these conventions while working within a similar style. When the state-approved director of the Abbey demanded he make changes to the script of The Plough and the Stars, he refused and had it produced as written, eventually leading to riots. As Clarke notes, O’Casey’s set too featured exacting details in the tradition of the Abbey, but as he has one of the characters constantly pick up and fiddle with object after object around the stage, he reminds the audience of the artificiality of the production and this portrayal of Irish life (215). He set the play during the Easter Rising, like other plays of the Abbey, but instead of portraying the glory of the nationalists fighting for freedom, shows it destroying a couple as the husband yearns for the appearance of glory rather than fighting for any true conviction. Even more upsetting to the audience, O’Casey critiques beloved nationalist martyr of the Easter Rising Patrick Pearse, by having an offstage voice recite some of Pearse’s “most bloodthirsty writing” to a crowd while onstage drunkards and a prostitute carouse in a pub, “equat[ing] nationalist enthusiasm with the bawdy, the bibulous and the brutal” (Moran 55). This disrespect for a beloved martyr was likely what lead to the planned riot in the audience of the play, but O’Casey clearly found it important to fight back against the accepted norms of performance and nationalism through his work, calling into question accepted tradition in the aim of more conversation. Caring more for the cause socialism than nationalism, he likely did not want Ireland to settle into its new position as a Free State believing freedom had been achieved for all. Perhaps he hoped his critical works would lead to discussion that would help further his goals of more radical economic change for Ireland.