On the Town: A book on the"forgotten things that we don't remember" about Dublin's Abbey Theatre was launched this week. Players and Painted Stage is "about the neglected things," says its editor, Christopher Fitz-Simon. The new book comprises eight essays, which form the 2004 Thomas Davis Lectures, to be broadcast each Thursday from next week on RTÉ Radio 1 at 8.02 p.m.
"In Alan Titley's lecture, I was amazed by the amount of Irish-language drama, mainly one-act plays, that existed. There was a profusion in the early part of the 20th century and I was astonished by that," said Fitz-Simon, whose own lecture opens the series and examines the diversity of popular theatre before the foundation of the Abbey in 1904.
Another contributor to the series, Christopher Murray of UCD's Drama and Theatre department, said the 1940s and 1950s are regarded by some as "the lost years" but that people "went to plays nightly in Dublin" during that time. "You had great popular authors such as George Shiels and Frank Carney who had long-running plays," he said.
Emer O'Kelly, journalist, critic and member of the Arts Council, discusses the development of theatre criticism in her lecture. "Until recently, the critic didn't see his or her role as giving a forward-looking context to what was going on on stage. A critic has a duty to take a much broader view and see what is going on on stage, within the context of what is going on in artistic life."
The Thomas Davis Lectures were first broadcast in 1953, said the series producer, Seamus Hosey. This series celebrates a century of theatre in Ireland, he said. Among those who came to the Abbey Theatre to enjoy the launch were poet Gerald Dawe of TCD, Cathal McCabe, director of the Irish Writers' Centre, Eithne Healy, chair of the board of the Abbey Theatre and Eithne Hand, head of RTÉ Radio 1.