The+Cripple+of+Inishmaan

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Playgoer's Companion Draft Text

I'm just re-stating what I said in class, and that is my belief that the playgoer's companion should make reference to the film "Man of Aran." Will McKinley

Joshua Underhill

In the play there is reference to the British rule in England. the following information talks about this invasion and the independence movements in the country prior to the time of the play.

=**20th Century Ireland**=

By the early 1900’s more and more nationalist groups appeared in Ireland inspired by the Irish cultural rival of the late 1800's and the thought of independence from Britain. Groups such as Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Brotherhod, the Irish volunteers and the Irish citizen army had been formed. In 1912 the Westminster Parliament in London passed the Home Rule Bill for Ireland, meaning that Ireland would have its own parliament and could make its own political decisions, to a certain extent of course. Unionists in Ireland strongly opposed Home Rule as they were loyal to Britain and seen the bill as a threat that could lead to a nationalist & Catholic dominated country.

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed by Unionist leader Edward Carson & James Craig, their goal? To defend the British nation of Ireland, by use of force if necessary. Within a year it was estimated the UVF had a force of over 100,000 men half of which armed with rifles.

As Ireland was heading fast towards civil war the First World War helped lead Ireland more towards independence from Britain. Unionists answered Britain’s call for the fight against Germany and the UVF merged into the 36th Ulster division of the British Army.

As Britain concentrated all its efforts in the fight against Germany in WWI, Ireland seen a window of opportunity and by 1915 the Irish Republican Brotherhood started their plot of a rebellion.

The Irish Rebellion of 1916
On Easter Sunday of 1916, the Irish rebellion began with Patrick Pearse reading the Irish Proclamation of Independence. The 1916 Rebellion had only lasted a week with Britain successfully regaining control of Dublin, after destroying most of the city. 14 leaders of the uprising were captured and executed, an event that fuelled Irish political opinions for years to follow.

The only surviving commander of the rebellion was Sinn Fein leader, Eamon De Valera who went onto to be president. Support for Sein Fein dramatically increased due to the execution of the rebellion leaders who fought for Ireland’s independence.

The Partition of Ireland
On 21 January 1919 the parliament of a self proclaimed Irish Republic established the declaration of the independence with the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence occurring 2 years later. 12 months later the war ends with the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty by the British and representatives from the self proclaimed Irish republic. The Irish Free State was now in existence but without 6 counties that was to become Northern Ireland

British oppression continued in Ireland against the Irish nationalists with November 1920 being an extremely bloody month. Irish hatred for Britain on Irish soil was fuelled even more when Kevin Barry, a member of the IRA, was captured and executed. Kevin was 18 years of age and was sentenced to death by the British military; he was hanged on 1 November 1920.

The Government of Ireland Act 1920 was introduced which divided Ireland into two territories, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. In 1921 the first Northern Ireland Parliament opened and after a long rebellion with the British, Southern Ireland is granted a partial home rule. Michael Collins assisted in setting up the Irish Free State, thinking it was a stepping stone for an all Ireland, which contained 26 Counties of Ireland but he was later assassinated during the Irish Civil War by those who opposed of the partition.

Ang Moore

Added information:

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 1930s. The film shows the harshness and rawness of this landscape that the people of Aran lived in and was tried to be captured in the play The Cripple of Inishmaan.**
 * "Man of Aran"

Irish Theatre and Culture 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, as Seamus Deane and others have argued, 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. According to Deane and others, the shattered and scattered heritage of a colonized culture such as Ireland demands – like Humpty Dumpty to be put back together again, but every reconstruction of history and national identity is at the same time an interpretation or even a fictionalization of history, and is always a political act. Much contemporary scholarship in Irish studies revolves in one way or another around the study of these various attempts at consolidating or disrupting versions of Irishness and Irish history that serve to reify or consolidate one political position or another. The title of Seamus Deane's //Celtic Revivals// (1985) indicates this sense of a series of competing attempts to define and redefine Irishness or Celticity, from W.B. Yeats's “indomitable” Anglo- Irish aristocracy allied with an idealized Celtic peasantry, to Daniel Corkery's nationalist vision of a “hidden Ireland” of Gaelic traditions, to the destabilized or absurd Irelands of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, or Flann O'Brien

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//The Oxford Companion to English Literature//. []

Martin McDonagh: A Casebook by Richard Rankin Russell
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This above book is a critical look at McDonagh's work from a literary point of view. It takes a look at his works and his influence in literature and theatre.

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REVIEWS

A //CurtainUp// Review**//**The Cripple Of Inishmaan**// **By Elyse Sommer 1998 (These are bits and pieces of the critique..not the whole thing)** Martin McDonagh's //The Cripple Of Inishmaan// is as funny and sad and exhilarating a new play as I've seen for some time. Director Jerry Zaks has fortunately been able to bring the one member of the London cast who comes closest to being irreplaceable --Ruaidhri (Roa-ree) Conroy as the title character "cripple" Billy. Conroy and his new supporting cast are more than deserving of the curtain calls they had to answer at the last preview performances I attended.

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West of reality (part of a review..not full text)
Michael Feingold //Wednesday, Dec 31 2008// //The Cripple of Inishmaan//, currently being revived at the Atlantic Theater, is one of the plays by which Martin McDonagh became well known. (The others are //The Beauty Queen of Leenane//, //The Lieutenant of Inishmore//, and //The Lonesome West//.) All written in a short period of time, they're the plays of an intelligent young man out to make a name for himself, displaying all the good and bad qualities that situation implies. With their zestful storytelling and sardonic humor comes an ingenuity that sometimes turns glibly show-offy and manipulative. With their arrestingly dark vision comes a kind of smirking satisfaction in glutting the audience's appetite for unpleasantness or explicit violence. And, hand in hand with the genuine love McDonagh displays for the stark, quirky, distant life of Ireland's craggy, sparsely populated West goes a bothersome hint of condescension: In their liltingly repetitive speech, his characters often seem a little dimwitted, slow to absorb information, relentlessly niggling over its details, maniacally misguided in the ways they act upon it. The sharp common sense and dogged faith in principle that traditionally infuse rural life barely exist in McDonagh's Ireland; his is the viewpoint of the city slicker, snickering with glee while his country cousins behave like vicious idiots.

Both the grim and the showy, however, appeal to theater people, who tend to accept the first as meaningful and the second as imaginative. McDonagh's plays regularly attract artists of great talent, often with powerful results. Even the Public Theater's 1998 misfire with //The Cripple of Inishmaan// was better than it's been painted: The gifted folk involved simply didn't generate enough subtlety and atmospheric sense to conceal the play's shortcomings, so that it fell flat on its own merits rather than being buoyed up by theirs. The new production, featuring a cast of Irish and Irish-American actors directed by Garry Hynes, of Galway's Druid Theatre, does better: It manages to stave off your suspicions for long periods of time

Youtube clip on a performance of Cripple of Inishmaan

Druid Presents The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh []

Tyler MacLennan

Bio:

McDonagh was born in England, March 26th, 1970, to Irish immigrant parents; however, he spent a significant amount of time visiting family in County Galway in Ireland during the summers. When Martin was sixteen, however, his parents returned to western Ireland to live. After his parents’ departure, Martin and his brother John Michael (a screenwriter) remained in London, where they took odd jobs and collected unemployment for a number of years. Astonishingly in 1994, McDonagh produced the rough drafts for seven plays in only nine-months. All but one of these original drafts have since been published and produced. McDonagh is notorious for dark comedy, often using his personal combination of the rough Irish dialect, heavy symbolism, and grim, surprising twists to weave a story worth hearing. Many critics compare McDonagh’s work to his fellow Irish playwright John Millington Synge and modern American scripter David Mamet; however similar, no one can deny the talent behind the storyteller, as McDonagh is already quite celebrated.

"In the late 1990’s, Martin McDonagh enjoyed the most auspicious theatrical debut since that of Oscar Wilde. Produced in thirty-nine countries in twenty-seven languages, McDonagh’s plays were performed in North America in 2001, more often than those of any other playwright save Shakespeare." [|(Joan Fitpatrick Dean)]

McDonagh’s first play, the //Beauty Queen of Leanne//, was produced, By[| Durid Theatre Company] in association with the //Royal Court// in 1996 when the author was Twenty-five. ([|Nicholas Grere])

( The Durid Theatre Company: Theatre company in Galway, Republic of Ireland, founded in 1975 by Garry Hynes, Mick Lally, and Marie Mullen, members of the Irish-language theatre company, An Taibhdhearc, and University College, Galway's student drama society. The theatre developed a reputation for fresh and original productions of Irish and continental classics, notably the 1982 staging of J M Synge's //The Playboy of the Western World//, taken on tour to New York, USA, in 1986.)

Leanne Trilogy- A Skull In Connemora and the Lonesome West, both produced in 1997 and with the production of the Cripple Of Inishmaan by the //British Royal National Theatre// in the same year, McDonagh was touted as the first Playwright since Shakespeare to have four plays running in London at the same time. ([|Nicholas Grere])

Martin McDonagh is one of the most important figures in the new generation of British playwrights that emerged in the 1990s. Born and bred in London but of Irish parentage, he is often held to represent a new form of ‘Anglo-Irishness’ that repudiates familiar constructions of nationality while remaining indebted to a tradition of Irish drama initiated by J. M. Synge, leading to suggestions that he is essentially a pasticheur. McDonagh himself claims little first-hand knowledge of this tradition, however, and he might more accurately be said to inhabit a postmodern world in which traditions are mediated by popular culture, especially television situation comedy and American cinema. He typifies a generation of dramatists for whom American influences are more pervasive than those of either England or Ireland, and whose ideas have been shaped less by theatre than by television, film and music. McDonagh’s plays thereby retain an ironic distance from the Irish writers he is sometimes said to imitate; the challenge instead will be to avoid too great an immersion in the popular culture of a newly ‘globalised’ Britain in which America is the dominant economic and cultural superpower. ([|Steven Price])

The play 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 w2hen 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.
 * Play Summary**


 * List of Works**:


 * The Leenane Trilogy**
 * //The Beauty Queen of Leenane// (1996)
 * //A Skull in Connemara// (1997)
 * //The lonesome West//(1997)

A crippled teenager schemes to get a part in Man of Aran. The play opened in 1997 at Royal National Theatre (Cottesloe) in London. In 1998, it opened at Joseph Papp Public Theatre in New York City.In December 2008, //The Cripple of Inishmaan// was produced in New York City by the Atlantic Theatre Company in conjunction with The Druid Theatre Company of Galway, Ireland. · //Banshees of Inisheer//**Other Plays**
 * The Aran Islands Trilogy**
 * //The Cripple of Inishmaan// (1996)
 * //The Lieutenant of Inishmore// (2001)
 * //The Pillowman// (2003)
 * //A Behanding in Spokane//(2010)


 * Films**

[|Six Shooter (2005).] Six Shooter, which is the playwright's first film, features Brandon Gleeson, Ruaidhri Conray, David Wilmot and Asiling O’Sullivan. The black comedy follows Gleeson as he makes a sad train journey home, just hours after his wife's death, but on the trip he encounters a strange and possibly psychotic young man.

[|In Bruges (2008)] In Bruges is about two hit men who hide out in Bruges after a job gone wrong, Staring Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, and Brendan Gleeson. It was released in the USA in 2008. The film was also the Opening Night film for the 2008 Sundance Festival and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

//The Guard// (2011) Martin is presently producing a film written by his brother[| James Michael McDonagh.]


 * Awards**

Won the 2003 [|Olivier Award] for best new comedy for his play "The Lieutenant of Inishmore".

Won the 2004 Olivier Award for best new play for his play "The Pillowman".

Has twice been nominated for Broadway's[| Tony Award] as author of a Best Play nominee: in 1998 for "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" and in 1999 for "The Lonesome West."

In 1997 he was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy for his play "A Skull in Connemara".

In 1998 he won the 1997-1998 [|Drama Desk Award] for Oustanding play for "Beauty Queen of Leenane".

In 2005 he was nominated for the 2004-2005 Drama Desk Award for Oustanding Play for "The Pillowman".

Won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play in 1998 for his Play "The Beauty Queen of Leenane".

He was nominated for the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play for "The Pillowman". He lost out to John Patrick Shanley for "Doubt".

In 2006 he won an[| Obie Award] for Best Play for "The Lieutenant of Inishmore".

He was nominated in 2006 for the Drama Desk Award for Best Play for the Broadway production of "The Lieutenant of Inishmore".

In 2006 he was nominated for Best Play at the Tony Awards for The Lieutenant of Inishmore

In July 2006 he was invited to join the[| Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)] At the age of 27 he was the first playwright since Shakespeare to have four plays running simultaneously in London's West-End

For his first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane he won the 1996 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright

In 1996 he won the[| George Devine Award] for Most Promising Playwright for his first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane

In 1996 he won the [|Writers Guild Award] for Best Fringe Play at the Edinburgh Fringe festival

In 2002 he won the Czech Theatre award entitled The [|Alfred Radok Award] for Best Play. He won for the final installment in his worldwide famous Leenane trilogy. The final installment is entitled The Lonesome West.

In 2003 he won his second Alfred Radok Theatre award for best play. This time He won for his political West End hit The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

In 1998 he was won the[| Lucille Lortel Award] for outstanding play. His play, The Beauty Queen of Lenane, tied with Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

He won the 1998 [|Outer Critics Award] for Best Broadway Play for The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

At the 64th Annual[| Drama League Awards] he won the Best Play category for his Broadway hit The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

In 1997 his play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was nominated for the BBC Play of the year award at the Olivier Awards.

I feel like there's definitely too much here. Maybe just go with the big name awards, like the Tony's and Drama Desk, or just list the total number of award he's gotten, etc. I don't think the title of every play he's done is necessary, either. Maybe just state how many he has, and mention that Cripple of Inishmaan is the first part of a trilogy. -Kendra Murray

I definitely agree with Kendra. Although it is interesting stuff to read about, I'm not really sure it's really needed for a playgoer's companion. It might be better to stick with basics, give enough without giving it all. It could be an overwhelming amount of information for a smaller document. -Kylee French


 * Quotes**

“I can't stand up in front of people. It just fills me with horror.”

“I've been on a treadmill of plays in London and here [New York]. It's a great treadmill to be on, but I finally had to step back and maybe live a little bit more and grow up and travel and see what kind of writer or person I've become.”

His greatest influences are not in theatre but film. He cites Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Terrence Malick and Quentin Tarrantino.
 * Interesting Facts**

His favourite music is Nirvana, The Clash and The Pogues.

He began his writing career by scripting radio plays. None of them were ever produced but they taught him he could write dialogue and storytelling and in his own opinion that was all you needed for Theatre.

It took five years to stage his Broadway and West-End hit The Lieutenant of Inishmore because all the major Theatres in London passed on it. In the case of the National Theatre according to McDonagh its artistic director Trevor Nunn refused it on the grounds that it's staging might disrupt the Northern Ireland peace process.

In his first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane there is a section where the main character Maureen tells Pato of the racist abuse she received while working as a cleaner in England. McDonagh has been quoted on saying that this was inspired by the stories he would hear from his own mother who heard similar abuse while she worked as a cleaner in London.

Although all his plays except for the Pillowman are based in Ireland and he regards himself as an Anglo-Irish playwright he has never lived full time in Ireland.

Along with other modern day playwrights Conor McPherson and Jez Butterworth. McDonagh is seen to be one of the key innovators of a new genre of theater that has become known as " In your Face " Theatre. It's function is to present the audience with vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on the stage.

//The Times// found the Cripple of Inishmaan a ‘wonderfully funny, troubling play’ and it’s author a born story teller with a precocious sense fo dramatic structure, ‘when you feel he is getting sentimental he hits you with a corrective shock”
 * Reviews**

A few critics disagreed.

//The Independent// thought that the Leenane plays ‘dicline into high-energy repetitive catoons’

//The Financial Times// called his talent ‘old fashioned’, his satire ‘Soppy’, and his Ireland (in the Cripple) ‘more artificial, more sentimental, more silly, more slow, more melodramatic, and light-years more cute then the real Ireland.’

They were not all critical though.

//The Financial Times// called him the ‘Quentin Tarrintino of the Emerald Isle.’

Like most Irish writers McDonagh is known for frequently integrating dark comedy into his plays and films. ‘I shouldn’t laugh at you Billy.....but I will.’ (Helen)
 * Irish Comedy**

While our society avoids words like ‘Cripple’ and certainly discourages laughter at such topics, Mcdonagh, like others, sees in the stark Aran would an absurdist awareness of our frailties and a healthy need to laugh at them.

‘It wouldn’t be very Christian thing to do. No, but it’d be awful funny.’ (Helen)

In this type of society the idea of calling someone a cripple is seen as logical. When Billy asks to not be called Cripple Billy and just be called Billy, he is confronted with straight logic to the subject.

‘Isn’t your name Billy, and aren’t you a cripple?

Even in the most sensitive of subjects there is complete honesty.

“I’ve heard me mammy was a beautiful women.” (Billy)

‘No, no, she was awful ugly.....she’d scare a pig.’ (Doctor)

‘The Cripple of Irishman displays a world so enclosed that it raises distancing laughter more often the painful recognition.’ ( Robert L. King )

there is alos a large element of physicaly dark comedy which can bee seen with Helen's Beating on her brother all the time, he cracking eggs over peoples heads, and also when we see BabbyBobby holding down Johnypateenmike and throwing rocks at his head, and when Billy comes clean to BabbyBobby about lying to him about him have TB, and Babbybooby beats him with a lead pipe.

Although Finding a set discription of what dark Irish comedy is difficult, an interview with Martin MacDonagh and Colin Farrel about MacDonagh's film //"In Bruges"//, in which the question of humor in the film and of Colin Farrels chracter i asked, I think gives a good example of what dark Irish comedy is from the point of view of someone portraying that type of character.


 * "Ray? Yeah, great sense of humor. I mean I have to point the finger at him (points to Martin McDonagh) for that you know. He kind of created him and wrote him and I sang it. Yeah, just wicked, but a sense of humor that’s, like if I’m having a laugh with mates I kind of know I’m having a laugh like most of us seem to, but we also love those characters we meet in life every now and then that have no idea how funny they are and you aren’t ever laughing at them. You are totally laughing with them and they might be bewildered as to why you find them so funny and they genuinely don’t understand it, but they just have a kind of a more unusual outlook on life or perspective. Ray was definitely one of those. He has no idea how funny how funny his outlook is, but it’s such a skewed look on his environment and the world around him and so lovely. There’s such purity to him, you know? He’s very childlike as well, perfectly honest. There’s no self-censorship or any of that good stuff. **" ([|Collin Farrel])

www.Collider.com, Entertainment Interviews, "Colin Farrell & Martin McDonagh Interview – IN BRUGES "

The overall consensus on what “Dark Irish Comedy” is, seems to be the ability to be both funny and disturbing at the sametime.


 * Sources**

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Suggestions

Just make sure that everything that you are including in the companion are things that are necessary for the viewer to know. Give them back ground information but dont over do it and make sure its clear and understandable.

Brooke

-Cripple of Inishmaan seems centrally to revolve around "Man of Aran" an actual film. Since it's so important to what is going on, I'd like to see information about what it's about, why this film in particular is significant (why it was chosen specifically) and how perhaps the play is similar in theme- or pays tribute to it, since I believe you said that at one time he's using actual lines from a screenplay.

~Ryan Hebert

I may be reaching a bit here, but I remember Russ mentioning in class that he had seen the documentary "Man of Aran" and that he was struck by certain elements of the geography of the surrounding area -- such as the waves -- and I was wondering if you thought that the geography would be something to look in to, or could give the audience a sense of depth. -Laurie MacKenzie

Liz McCabe I would recommend including perhaps where other plays were performed, or where this play had its first performance? And I also agree with the above comments, to include "Man of Aran" information, background, significance.

Having not read the play I would like more information about their sense of humour. Also everyone is saying add stuff about the Man of Aran movie. Honestly I would mention a tiny bullet about the one of the plays he wrote being a movie. They came to see the play not go there to get info to go home and watch a movie then come back to the play to understand little details in the play which some may already get. Since the guide is limited I would focus on the play, author, and Irish culture rather then other work he has done in great details.

Laura Graham

-Meghan Jagoe Most everybody has mentioned the inclusion of information of The Man of Aran, and I agree, so I'll leave it at that. Other than that, I find that the information of the cultural climate of Ireland, while perhaps not as necessary as the text on the Irish theatre traditions, is still quite relevant, but maybe in a very much reduced manner. This is more a comment for the Playgoer's Companion group than the Task Force, but even just a quick sentence or two about the conflict in Ireland thrown into another section would be useful, I feel.

I'm also just restating what I said in class, but I think a little background on how the playwright shot to stardom would be interesting, what play/etc helped his current fame?

Michelle Chisholm

Jessica Davidson Because Martin McDonaugh is already so widely known, I would just give a list of his more well known works, the year they were produced, and only the major-major awards he has achieved. No doubt the audience that makes it to the Cripple will have been exposed to another one of his dramas, and will be going partly because it is McDonaugh's work. I would also put in who he is influenced by, because he definitely has a lot in common with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. These names would help audience members place him in caliber and status as a writer and director. Nonetheless, the background information that the group turned out was fantastic because we as members of the class will always know a lot more about the play than the average audience member, unless we have some 'church history' fanatics as Russ described once.