3. TSI

‘TSI: Teresa Deevy, or What do we know about [The] Reapers?’ provides an important exploration of Teresa Deevy’s first professionally produced play, [The] Reapers, which premiered at The Abbey Theatre on 18 March 1930. By launching a Theatre Studies Investigation of the play—for which little archival material exists—this chapter underscores the difficulty in presenting a cogent, sustained academic argument about its subject. Due to the fragmentary nature of available evidence, therefore, the chapter does not offer an extensive interrogation of the play or production; rather, it presents responses to, and mini-arguments about, the surviving archival materials, such as the interpretation of its title and the play’s plot, the Abbey Theatre’s production and reception of it, and possible influences on Deevy and her work. The chapter affords an example of academic discourse in action as new evidence discovered between the time of original submission and the time of final editing refined some of the mini-arguments mentioned above.