CI+PC



//"Martin McDonagh's cruel, but not altogether heartless comedy [and] the sly viciousness and in-bred eccentricitiy of McDonagh's smalltown anti-heroes."// -- Daily Telegraph

Inspired by the Irish Cultural rival of the late 1800s and the thought of Independence from Britain, many nationalist groups had been formed in the early 1900s. In 1912, the Westminster Parliament in London passed the Home Rule Bill, which allowed Ireland to have its own Parliament and make its own political decision- to a certain extent. Unionists in Ireland were strongly opposed to this because they were loyal to Britain; as a result, they saw the Bill as a threat that could lead to a nationalist and Catholic domination of the country. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed to defend the British nation of Ireland, and within a year had an estimated 100,000 men involved. As Ireland was moving fast toward a Civil War, WW1 helped Ireland move closer toward Independence. The UVF answered Britain’s call the help with the Germans, and entered into their army. By 1915, with the war in full swing, a nationalist group called the Irish Republican Brotherhood began a plot of rebellion. The 1916 Rebellion of Ireland only lasted a week, ending with Britain successfully regaining power in Dublin, but not before they destroyed almost half of the city. Fourteen leaders of the rebellion were captured and executed, and the only survivor, Eamon De Valera, went on to be President. The events that went on in that time fuelled Irish political opinions for years to follow. On January 21st, 1919, the parliament of a self proclaimed Irish Republican established a declaration of Independence, with the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence occurring two years later. Twelve months later, the war ended with the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty by Britain and representatives from the Irish Republicans. The Irish Free State was now in existence. Britain still continued to oppress the Irish Nationalists. The government of Ireland Act was introduced in 1920, and it divided Ireland into two territories: Northern and Southern Ireland. In 1921, the first Northern Ireland Parliament opened and after a long rebellion against the British, Southern Ireland was granted a partial home rule. The Irish Free State was set up by Michael Collins, and it consisted of 26 counties. He was later assassinated in a civil war that broke out due to opposition of the partition.


 * Martin McDonagh** was born March 26th 1970 in Camberwell, London, England. Though he has never lived in Ireland, his parents were Irish immigrants and he considers himself an Anglo-Irish playwright, frequently spending time visiting his relatives in Ireland. When McDonagh was 16 his parents returned to Ireland, leaving Martin and his brother in London, where they took on odd jobs and collected unemployment to pay the bills. Beginning his career by scripting radio plays – none of which were ever produced – McDonagh developed his skills in storytelling and writing dialogue. By the age of 25, his first play //The Beauty Queen of Leanne,// for which he won the 1997-98 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, was being produced by the Druid Theatre Company. The following year, 1997, McDonagh saw four of his plays produced in London – for which he was later touted as the first playwright since Shakespeare to have accomplished such a feat. He quickly became known for his use of dark comedy, rough Irish dialect, and grim plot twists. Since then, he has been nominated for and won several other Drama Desk Awards, and four Tony Awards. He has also begun trying his hand at the film industry, working as a writer for //Six Shooter// (2005), //In Burges// (2008), and will be collaborating with his brother, James Michael McDonagh, on //The Guard//, to be released in 2011. [what is the source of this? It's not on the wiki page. -- Russ]

// “McDonagh, a precocious Anglo-Irish playwright, is a natural storyteller. He can make an audience gasp. He knows how to twist a plot, how to reveal personality through gesture, and how to bring the set into play. He is also, incidentally, very funny.” // -- The New Yorker




 * (As for Martin...I tried to find a less creepy picture. There aren't very many that look like they'll print well. But I thought I'd post a couple more options.)**

**(I found a couple more pictures of the Aran Islands/Coast. I'm terrible with technology, so I have no idea which, if any, will print well in black and white.)**

This play touches on many aspects of Irish culture during in the 1930's. It is set on the remote island of Inishmaan, which John Millington once described in 1903 as possibly the most primitive places left in Europe. The Cripple of Inishmaan is a portrayal of a pure Irish life with a petty comic extreme, which is suddenly given meaning when the Hollywood film director Robert Flaherty and his crew of Americans arrive to shoot the [|Man of Aran] on location in 1934. McDonagh’s Characters see in the filming only an opportunity to escape to Hollywood and the good life in America. [|(Man of Aran Clip)] To the islander’s amazement, Cripple Billy, the outcast and orphan of Inishmaan, is hired by Flaherty and travels to Hollywood for a screen test bursting with Irish Clichés and stereotypes about the Irish and the disabled that sends Billy packing for home were in turn he unmasks the lies surrounding his birth and the death of his parents.

The film that is of central importance to this play was not simply incorporated to make the story work. The film Man of Aran was an actual movie that was shot just as it is depicted in the play. The documentary film by Robert j. Flahertly (1934) Man of Aran was the film that inspired this piece of theatre. The documentary film was made on an island off the coast of Ireland in the 1930's. the film shows the harshness and rawness of this landscape that the people of Aran lived in and was tried to be caputred in the play //The Cripple of Inishmaan.// This film shows just how rigorous the the terrain actually was on this remote island. It also paints a picture as to what kind of natural environmental hardships the people who lived on this island had to face everyday.

Nationalism and identity politics are central areas of concern in Irish C ultural studies. A variety of cultural and political positions founded upon political affiliation and ethnic, religious, and linguistic allegiances makes the identification or establishment of one Irish character or of one form of “Irishness” highly problematic. At the same time, much of the force of Irish cultural production since the end of the eighteenth century has come from the urge to create or identify and/or to disrupt some variety of essential Irishness, some sense of a stable Irish national identity, whether that identity is based on a nationalist vision of Irishness, a unionist or loyalist desire to assert Britishness over Irishness , or a more cosmopolitan and European vision of Ireland. Much contemporary scholarship in Irish studies revolves in one way or another around the study of the various attempts at consolidating or disrupting versions of Irishness and Irish history that serve to reify or consolidate one political position or another.

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