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Copyright

Úna Kealy; Kate McCarthy;

Published On

2025-04-07

Page Range

pp. 131–154

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

6. ‘I Must Just Make an Opening Elsewhere’

Teresa Deevy’s Involvement with Studio Theatre Practice, 1934–1958

Chapter of: Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy(pp. 131–154)
‘I must just make an opening elsewhere’: Teresa Deevy’s involvement with studio and amateur theatre practice 1934-1958’ considers Teresa Deevy’s ambition for her theatre work outside the Abbey Theatre and expands theatre scholarship in relation to that era outwards from that institution. Challenging the popular misconception that Deevy’s creative practice and ambition declined during the 1940s, the chapter illustrates that the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were decades when Deevy pursued radio and theatre productions of her work with energetic ambition. Building on recent analysis of Deevy’s correspondence and Irish studio theatre practice, the chapter evidences how, as early as the mid-1930s, Deevy sought theatre productions of her work outside the Abbey in Dublin, London, Waterford, and New York, and radio productions of her work in Ireland and Britain. The chapter concludes that, while Deevy is primarily recalled as an Abbey dramatist—albeit one who was ousted—and that she did write extensively for the Abbey Theatre during the 1930s and for radio during the 1940s, her interest, ambition, and involvement in theatre and radio drama extended throughout her career. As such, the chapter is relevant to Deevy scholars and those interested in twentieth-century Irish theatre practice, little, pocket, or studio theatres of the twentieth century.

Contributors

Úna Kealy

(author)
Lecturer in Theatre Studies and English at South East Technological University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4660-2838

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

(author)
Lecturer in Drama at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at South East Technological University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5095-0344

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).