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Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy - cover image

Copyright

Úna Kealy; Kate McCarthy. Copyright of individual chapters are maintained by the chapter author(s).

Published On

2025-04-07

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-430-7
Hardback978-1-80511-431-4
PDF978-1-80511-432-1
HTML978-1-80511-434-5
EPUB978-1-80511-433-8

Language

  • English

Print Length

360 pages (xxx+330)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 25 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.98" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 29 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.14" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback684g (24.13oz)
Hardback863g (30.44oz)

Media

Illustrations20

OCLC Number

1514489641

THEMA

  • 1DDR
  • ATD
  • DSG
  • DNBF

BISAC

  • LIT013000
  • PER011030
  • PER003100
  • SOC032000
  • BIO022000

Keywords

  • Teresa Deevy
  • Irish drama, theatre, and performance
  • Deaf
  • Deafened
  • Archive
  • Twentieth-century Ireland

Active Speech

Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy

'Active Speech' is a groundbreaking collection of scholarly essays and practitioner interviews focused on the work of Irish playwright Teresa Deevy. Acts of recovery in the 1980s and 1990s challenged Deevy’s exclusion from the literary canon, reclaiming her contributions as significant to Irish drama and theatre. The recent resurgence of scholarship and productions evidences that, as a deafened woman and Irish playwright, Deevy’s creative power continues to disrupt and tilt the canon of Irish drama, theatre, and performance.

Essays within the collection explore how Deevy’s work interrogates early to mid-twentieth century Irish social norms and ideologies and provide a rich context for understanding her plays. The collection highlights the interdisciplinary nature of research on Deevy and offers insights on her work through archival research, literary analysis, and practitioner perspectives from Deaf and hearing theatremakers.

One of the collection's strengths lies in its collaborative and inclusive approach, showcasing diverse methodologies and rigorous scholarship. The chapters on archival research and practitioner perspectives offer compelling models and avenues for future studies. This volume is an essential resource for scholars, educators, and theatremakers alike.

Endorsements

This much-needed interdisciplinary study of Theresa Deevy covers personal anecdotes, the archives, lost plays, different forms of performances, Deevy’s relationships, possible pseudonyms, and more. I would recommend this book for Irish Studies, theatre, and general readers.

Prof. Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Seton Hall University

Additional Resources

Contents

  • Úna Kealy
  • Kate McCarthy

Contributors

Úna Kealy

(editor)
Lecturer in Theatre Studies and English at Waterford Institute of Technology

Úna Kealy lectures in Theatre Studies and English in South East Technological University (SETU). Prior to her career in academia, Úna worked as a drama workshop facilitator and arts manager in Britain and Ireland in both state-funded and commercial theatre organisations. In 2022, she worked with Amanda Coogan, Alvean Jones, Lianne Quigley, Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, Cork Deaf Community Choir, and SETU staff and students on a research project entitled Lyrical Bodies, an investigation of Teresa Deevy’s ballet Possession, which was performed in Project Arts Centre, Dublin and The Granary Theatre, Cork as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival in 2024. With Kate McCarthy, she has co-authored ‘Writing from the Margins: Re-framing Teresa Deevy’s Archive and Her Correspondence with James Cheasty c.1952–1962’, Irish University Review 52.2 (2022); ‘Shape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just like a Lady by Amanda Coogan in collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf: An Appropriation of Teresa Deevy’s The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935)’, in The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, Vol 1: 1716–1992 (Liverpool University Press, 2021); and ‘Participatory Performances: Spaces of Creative Negotiation’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (Palgrave, 2018). Other publications include ‘Resisting Power and Direction: The King of Spain’s Daughter by Teresa Deevy as a Feminist Call to Action’, Estudios Irlandeses, 15 (2020) and ‘Stasis, Rootlessness and Violence in Lay Me Down Softly’, in The Art of Billy Roche: Wexford as the World (Peter Lang, 2012). With Richard Hayes, she co-authored ‘Artistic Vision and Regional Resistance: The Gods Are Angry, Miss Kerr and the Red Kettle Theatre Company, a Case Study’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (Palgrave, 2018).

Kate McCarthy

(editor)
Lecturer in Drama at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at South East Technological University

Kate McCarthy is Lecturer in Drama at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, South East Technological University (SETU). Her public engagement takes many forms, including: theatre practice, workshops, drama and theatre education projects, educational resources, public talks, and podcasts, as well as publications and conference contributions. Alongside co-authored publications on Teresa Deevy and contemporary regional theatre practice with Úna Kealy, she has co-authored book chapters and co-created educational resources about Waterford’s Magdalene Laundry and Saint Dominick’s Industrial School (with Jennifer O’Mahoney, SETU) and on drama education (with Marian McCarthy, UCC). As a practitioner, she facilitates and devises performances and drama education projects in Ireland and Britain. Kate is a co-researcher on the Lyrical Bodies Project and the Waterford Memories Project. She is the Policy and Advocacy Elected Member of the Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR) (2023–2026).