Irish Theatre History and Archives

The MA in Irish Theatre History & Archives offers a hands-on approach to the study of Irish theatre history as a living process. We move from the nineteenth-century plays of Oscar Wilde and the early Abbey plays of W.B. Yeats and Sean O’Casey, to the towering genius of Samuel Beckett in mid-century, and on to major contemporary dramatists such as Brian Friel, Marina Carr and Enda Walsh. Finally, this programme considers the growing role of interdisciplinary arts practice, dance, and collaborative theatre-making approaches including devising in the contemporary Irish theatre today.As a students on this course, you have unprecedented access to one of the world’s greatest Irish theatre archives— working with the treasures of the Abbey and Gate Theatre Digital Archives, as well as the papers of Thomas Kilroy, Druid Theatre, the Lyric Players’ Theatre, and many more. These archives include hundreds of videos of performances and original promptbooks, as well as correspondence between major authors, drafts of plays, set and costume designs, and much more.With classes taught by world-leading scholars, this course offers you the opportunity to work in the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, the major international centre for research on Irish theatre and performance, and to gain access to hands-on work experience in either archive maintenance and acquisition and/or literary management for the theatre.