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COPYRIGHT 2004 Irish American Cultural Institute
During the early decades of the twentieth century, 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 by very different means. The Ulster Branch of the Irish Literary Theatre, set up in 1902, brought plays from the Dublin-based dramatic revival on tour to Belfast. However, when William Butler Yeats, one of the leading forces behind the foundation of both the Irish Literary Theatre (1899-1901) and the Irish National Theatre Society (1903), heard about the Ulstermen's artistic project, he would not allow them to use one of his companies' names and forbade them from staging dramas he was in the process of copyrighting. (1) Bulmer Hobson and David Parkhill, the founders of the Ulster theatre, promptly changed the company's name as well as its creative focus. "Damn Yeats, we'll write our own 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 moved into the Abbey Theatre. Between 1904 and 1915, the Ulster Literary Theatre staged twenty new plays and numerous revivals. (3) A number of these were dramatic failures, some of the dramas stood out, 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 found its own surprisingly simple solution to negotiate such diverse political and cultural tensions. In particular the work of two playwrights, Rutherford Mayne and Gerald MacNamara, illustrates that the Ulster Literary Theatre explored Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism not as political concepts but as defining parameters of social and cultural identity. Their conclusion was not a separatist one. Identities are complex and ambiguous, Mayne's and MacNamara's plays suggest. Particular features and interests are never the sole property of one political, cultural, or religious faction, but are shared by a number of identifiable groups. The same applied to sectarian extremism: bigotry was a feature of nationalist militants as well as of unionist activists. MacNamara satirized such weaknesses in order to promote open-mindedness; Mayne fostered tolerance with his fair-minded portrayals of County Down life.
For the formation of the new company in 1904, Parkhill and Hobson were joined by writers such as Joseph Campbell and Rutherford Mayne, and by enthusiastic artists from the Belfast School of Art. The school's Sketching Club had already staged dramatic entertainments and showed a specific interest in elaborate stage design. (4) Much 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 lectured at the Belfast School of Art. His sons, Harry, Fred, Jack, Edwin and Norman Morrow, participated in the school's productions. (5) All had a talent for painting and sketching, but 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 two 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 Clubs. The Morrow family produced anti-loyalist sketches at entertainments in their own home, and Jack and George would later draw anti-British cartoons for Hobson's paper The Republic. (7)
Nationalist and unionist sympathies competed more strongly in Ulster than in the rest of Ireland. This created a potentially volatile situation for the theatre members' political bias. Yeats and Lady Gregory avoided partisanship by imposing a "no-politics" stipulation on their Dublin theatre company. (8) For them, as for most of the playwrights of the Irish National Theatre Society, nationalism was not a political notion but 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 only be naive for the Belfast-based playwrights, but 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 on the ideological foundation of the company. At first sight, the articles appear to be an eclectic blend of literary criticism; discussions on sociology, politics, arts and crafts; as well as opinionated views on new Irish drama. They share, however, one 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, so Ulster plays would be different from the "national" drama presented at the Abbey. (10) Although most 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 run "on broad propagandist lines," but "non-sectarian and nonpolitical." (11) This paradox implied an acknowledgment of the complexity of society, and was only possible because the Ulster Literary Theatre viewed its objective in terms 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.
Replacing political difference with regional variation opened up a surprising range of possibilities: it allowed the Ulster Literary Theatre to respond to sectarian issues and still be committed to the whole panorama of social life. (12) The theater's repertoire was intended as "a commentary on the political and social conditions in the North of Ireland," (13) and one of its members proposed that Ulstermen needed to cooperate "without fear of compromising their political opinions." (14) The Ulster peasant on the stage did not avoid problematic issues, as many of the Abbey Theatre's characters did, but confronted them. Satirical plays allowed the playwrights to ridicule, if not subvert, sectarian beliefs--in particular those of a narrow-minded nature. Many of the plays of the Ulster Literary Theatre did reveal a nationalist bias; yet, the company did not eschew unsettling the dogmatic principles of Irish nationalist ideology as well.
Remarkable, too, is that Uladh attempted to "bridge that gulf" between the North and the South of the island. (15) The Ulster company's provincial focus endeavored to create an elastic concept of the nation that acknowledged difference. (16) While the Abbey Theatre created a national identity on the basis of an image of the West of Ireland and Kiltartan dialect, the Ulster Literary Theatre replaced that model with its own regional identity, inspired by a variety of northern dialects and customs. The Irish National Theatre Society created a unitary notion of Irish identity. The Ulster artists, on the other hand, argued that regional, social and political differences cannot and should not be transcended.
Rutherford Mayne, the pseudonym for Samuel John Waddell (1878-1967), became one of the main playwrights on the Ulster Literary Theatre repertoire. Waddell grew up in a Presbyterian missionary family in Tokyo. After the death of their mother, the six children stayed in Belfast and were educated there. Samuel Waddell studied engineering, but the liberal, multicultural environment of Japan had opened his mind to other experiences. While still a student, he joined the Ulster Literary Theatre. After graduating as an engineer in...
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