Brainstorm | Opinion, Analysis, Reports, Features

The stage of the Eblana Theatre under Dublin's Busáras. Photo: Mal McCann from The Dignity of Everyday Life: Celebrating Michael Scott's Busáras (Merrion Press)

The story of the secret theatre buried under Dublin's Busáras

The Eblana theatre ensured the capital city's main bus station was also a busy cultural and social space for many decades

History • 05 Sep 24

O'Brien received personal attacks and condemnation as well as roundly negative reviews during the run of her first play at The Abbey. Photo: Getty Images

You know about Edna O'Brien's novels, but what about her plays?

The theatre was a space for the Clare woman to explore her literary muses and navigate the convoluted structures of Irish society

Edna O'Brien • 09 Aug 24

English poet, dramatist and St Patrick fanboy, James Shirley, pictured in an engraving by Thomas Lupton. Image: Getty Images

The story of St Patrick's first appearance on an Irish stage

The first depiction of the nation's patron saint on an Irish stage was a disappointing, underwhelming and insulting affair

st patricks day • 13 Mar 24

The cast of the Beauty Queen of Leenane on Broadway in 1998: (from left) Tom Murphy, Anna Manahan, Marie Mullen and Brian F. O'Byrne. Photo: Steve Azzara/Corbis via Getty Images

A fairytale of New York: Martin McDonagh, Druid & Beauty Queen

27 years ago, Martin McDonagh's Beauty Queen of Leenane and Druid Theatre were the toast of Broadway winning four Tony Awards

Theatre • 02 Jul

'How can anything be agreed upon?' The cast of Agreement. Photo: Carrie Davenport/Lyric Theatre Belfast

Do political events make for good theatre?

There has been a rich seam of political and documentary theatre in Ireland in the post-Celtic Tiger era

Theatre • 04 Apr 23

Writer Kate O'Brien "had to remove references to a pregnancy outside of marriage, as being only for 'fun'. Photo: RTÉ Still Library

How Irish Free State theatre excluded women from public life

The process of forgetting women playwrights has resulted in a male-dominated literary canon of Irish theatre

History • 27 Sep 22

Anthony Hopkins in The Father. Photo: Film4/Allstar

Why stories of male ageing are having a moment onstage and screen

Recent plays and films have much to say about how society deals with male ageing, memory loss and dementia

Culture • 11 May 21

Colm Mac Con Iomaire plays the violin while students Leanne Anderson and Sarah Dooley perform to Emer's Dream inside the Quadrangle Building at NUI Galway. Photo: Aengus McMahon.

Rehearsal during lockdown and the creative potential it brings

Covid-19 has led to significant challenges for performance and theatre yet rehearsal during lockdown is not only possible, it's full of creative potential.

Theatre • 30 Apr 21

Thomas Kilroy's play, Christ, Deliver Us! dramatised the experiences of teenage boys in a boarding school in the midlands in 1950s Ireland.

The cultural responses to Ireland's institutional past

The Abbey Theatre, and other theatres, have created cultural responses to Ireland's institutional past (and present) by drawing on testimony and archival records, as well as contemporary experiences.

Theatre • 22 Apr 21

Genevieve Lyons: "audiences prefered to go to Dun Laoghaire to see Lyons as Sally Bowles than go to see Harris in the same role on the big screen". Photo: NUI Galway Archives

How one of the world's biggest musicals found its star in Dublin

Genevieve Lyons played a central role in Irish theatre in the 1950s at a time the country was undergoing much cultural change

Brainstorm • 08 Jan 21

The Galway team take the pitch for The Big Game in Castlebar in 1987. Photo: Macnas Archives

A game of two halves: when Irish sport meets theatre

How has Irish identity and culture been represented by performances involving sport onstage?

Culture • 21 Aug 20

A scene from the Abbey Theatre's 1942 production of Sean O'Casey's The Plough And The Stars featuring FJ Mc Cormick, Joan Plunkett, Austin Meldon, Eric Gorman and others. Photo: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

How theatre promotes conversations around social injustice

Theatre and performance can provide an ideal setting for those experiences that usually lie in the shadows

Brainstorm • 05 Aug 20

Irish playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory. Photo: George C. Beresford/Beresford/Getty Images

Why Lady Gregory is one of Ireland's greatest cultural figures

From plays to co-founding the Abbey, Lady Gregory had a profound influence on Irish literature and culture

Brainstorm • 20 May 20

"Fresh and modern": Maxine Peake plays Titania in Russell T Davies' 2016 adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the BBC

Stay home and watch Shakespeare

Your guide to the best of Shakespeare to watch on RTÉ and elsewhere in the middle of a lockdown and global pandemic

Culture • 16 Apr 20

Alison Spittle, the queenpin behind the #CovideoParty series of collective online film-watching

Why are audiences seeking out live collective events online?

These events show that it is reassuring during a period of coronavirus isolation to be together even if we are home alone

Coronavirus • 06 Apr 20

Paris Fitzpatrick as Romeo and Cordelia Braithwaite as Juliet in Matthew Bourne's Romeo And Juliet at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London in 2019. Photo: Robbie Jack/Corbis via Getty Images

How literature has dealt with pandemics and plagues

From Romeo & Juliet and Pale Horse Pale Rider to Dracula and 1984, four centuries of disease and death on the page

Culture • 20 Mar 20

Deirdre O'Connell, pictured at the funeral of her husband Luke Kelly in 1984. Photo: Independent News And Media/ Getty Images

How Deirdre O'Connell changed Irish culture

The overlooked story of "the single greatest influence in Irish theatre since the 60s"

Culture • 19 Feb 20

Dev Patel in The Personal History of David Copperfeld

How David Copperfield tells the story of Charles Dickens

The new film shows how theatre helped Dickens to establish and hone his identity as a professional author

Charles Dickens • 27 Jan 20

Teresa Deevy. Photo: Maynooth University Archive

Teresa Deevey: the overlooked Irish playwright

Like the women in her plays, the playwright was also silenced and shunned by Irish society

Theatre • 09 Jan 20

Shakespeare's world of deaths, corpses and ghosts

Grisly demises and haunting encounters are not just for Halloween in Shakespeare's tragedies and histories

Shakespeare • 31 Oct 19

Jemima Watling as Eliza Medhurst and Toby Wynn-Davies as Chandos Bellingham in Phil Willmott's 2019 production of After Dark at London's Finborough Theatre. Photo: Sheila Burnett

A 19th century play with modern overtones

Dion Boucicault's After Dark shows how innovative, socially engaged and challenging 19th-century popular theatre was in its time

Theatre • 11 Jul 19

Ollie West in Dead Centre's performance of Hamnet

When theatre goes digital...

How does contemporary theatre function when it no longer entirely "human"?

Theatre • 02 May 19

Country Girls: the ties that link Edna O'Brien and Louise O'Neill

Both are strong, independent women unafraid to tell the truth in their writing

Brainstorm • 08 Jan 20

"Plays written by Frank McGuinness, Aidan Mathews and Tom Murphy demonstrate real concern over such erosion of civil rights and the potential for abuse of these laws by the gardaí"

I fought the law: how 1980s' Irish theatre took on the gardai

Irish theatre responded to serious problems within the police force in the 1970s and 1980s with surprising fury

Theatre • 26 Mar 19

Oscar winner Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in The Favourite

The art of acting naturally

The trend to award Oscars for portrayals of "real" people shows the extent to which we value naturalism, but this was not always the case

Acting • 28 Feb 19