An open national identity: Rutherford Mayne, Gerald MacNamara, and the plays of the Ulster Literary Theatre

During the early decades of the twentieth hundred while Ireland's Abbey Theatre tried hard to create a unified image of nationhood in the figure of a West-of-Ireland peasant, a little theatre company in the North of Ireland addressed issues of national representation through very different means. The Ulster Branch of the Irish Literary Theatre, station up in 1902, brought plays from the Dublin-based dramatic revival upon tour to Belfast. However, when William Butler Yeats, single of the leading forces behind the foundation of the couple the Irish Literary Theatre (1899-1901) and the Irish National Theatre Society (1903) heard about the Ulstermen's artistic throw out he would not allow them to use individual of his companies' names and forbade them from staging dramas he was in the proces of copyrighting. (1) Bulmer Hobson and David Parkhill, the originators of the Ulster theatre, promptly changed the company's name as well as its creative focus. "Damn Yeats, we'll write our have a title to plays," was Hobson's response to Yeats's protective attitude. (2) The break with Dublin marked the start of the Ulster Literary Theatre. Ironically, the Belfast company's inaugural production in December 1904 took place during the same month when the Irish National Theatre Society mov into the Abbey Theatre. Between 1904 and 1915 the Ulster Literary Theatre staged twenty fresh plays and numerous revivals. (3) A number of these were dramatic failures, a certain quantity of of the dramas stood on the outside but most significant was this group's capacity to navigate between a range of conflicting identities: Ulster unionism and Irish nationalism, Catholicism and Protestantism, a northern versus southern identity. What I intend to argue in this article is that the Ulster Literary Theatre ground its own surprisingly simple solution to negotiate similar diverse political and cultural tensions. In particular the work of sum of two units playwrights, Rutherford Mayne and Gerald MacNamara, illustrates that the Ulster Literary Theatre explored Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism not as political general [i]or[/i] abstract notions but as defining parameters of social and cultural identity. Their conclusion was not a separatist individual Identities are complex and ambiguous, Mayne's and MacNamara's plays refer to Particular features and interests are not ever the sole property of individual political, cultural, or religious faction, on the contrary are shared by a number of identifiable clusters The same applied to sectarian extremism: bigotry was a feature of nationalist militants as well as of unionist activists. MacNamara satirized like weaknesses in order to help open-mindedness; Mayne fostered tolerance with his fair-minded portrayals of shire Down life.

For the formation of the fresh company in 1904, Parkhill and Hobson were joined by the agency of writers such as Joseph Campbell and Rutherford Mayne, and by the agency of enthusiastic artists from the Belfast institute of Art. The school's Sketching bludgeon had already staged dramatic entertainments and showed a specific interest in elaborate stage design. (4) a great deal of of this stemmed from the active involvement of Harry Morrow and his family. Morrow, who ran an interior design business that specialized in decorating, painting, and renovation, also lectur at the Belfast institute of Art. His sons, Harry, Fr Jack, Edwin and Norman Morrow, participated in the school's productions. (5) All had a talent for painting and sketching, on the contrary Harry and Fred would become major contributors to the Ulster Literary Theatre's stage design, repertoire and production standard. Delving into conflicting political identities in an objective manner would not be easy for any of them: Hobson Parkhill and the Morrow family all shared a nationalist bias. The first sum of two units belonged to the Protestant National Association in Belfast and were interested in using Irish drama "as a vehicle of propaganda." (6) Hobson was also a member of the Dungannon cudgels The Morrow family produced anti-loyalist sketches at entertainments in their have a title to home, and Jack and George would later draw anti-British cartoons for Hobson's paper The Republic. (7)

Nationalist and unionist sympathies compet more powerfully in Ulster than in the quiescence of Ireland. This created a potentially volatile situation for the theatre members' political bias. Yeats and Lady Gregory avoided partisanship through imposing a "no-politics" stipulation upon their Dublin theatre company. (8) For them, as for greatest in quantity of the playwrights of the Irish National Theatre Society, nationalism was not a political notion on the contrary a cultural focus rooted in the revival of "an ancient idealism"--an imaginative sensibility, as it were, dedicated to the discovery of a sincere national identity. Yeats and Gregory's decision to remain "outside all the political questions that divide us" (9) would not alone be naive for the Belfast-based playwrights, on the other hand it would also sound false to their individual political convictions.

The literary magazine Uladh, four issues of which were published during the Ulster Literary Theatre's first season, provides a wealth of information upon the ideological foundation of the company. At first sight, the articles appear to be an eclectic mingle of literary criticism; discussions upon sociology, politics, arts and crafts; as well as opinionated views upon new Irish drama. They share, however, individual crucial attribute: all of the contributions highlight the value of emphasizing the North's regional identity in negotiating between sectarian oppositions. According to Uladh, Ulster was not Ireland, for a like reason Ulster plays would be different from the "national" drama neared at the Abbey. (10) Although greatest in quantity of the key members of the Ulster Literary Theatre were nationalists, the company made a case for an Ulster identity that was pluralist rather than dogmatic. The theater was to be step quickly "on broad propagandist lines," on the contrary "non-sectarian and nonpolitical." (11) This paradox implied an acknowledgment of the complexity of society, and was single possible because the Ulster Literary Theatre viewed its objective in bounds that rejected Ulster's traditional binary oppositions: Catholic versus Protestant, nationalist versus unionist. Its "propaganda" was for the recognition of Ulster as a region with a distinct identity.