Author: Brendan Behan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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Book Description

Author: Neil LaBute
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802142122
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In Seconds of Pleasure Neil LaBute unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor."--Jacket.

Author: Brendan Behan
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 9781567921052
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This miracle of autobiography and prison literature begins: "Friday, in the evening, the landlady shouted up the stairs: 'Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Sacred Heart, Boy, there's two gentlemen here to see you.' I knew by the screeches of her that the gentlemen were not calling to inquire after my health . . . I grabbed my suitcase, containing Pot. Chlor., Sulph Ac, gelignite, detonators, electrical and ignition, and the rest of my Sinn Fein conjurer's outfit, and carried it to the window . . ." The men were, of course, the police, and seventeen-year-old Behan. He spent three years as a prisoner in England, primarily in Borstal (reform school), and was then expelled to his homeland, a changed but hardly defeated rebel. Once banned in the Irish Republic, Borstal Boy is both a riveting self-portrait and a clear look into the problems, passions, and heartbreak of Ireland.

Author: Ulick O'Connor
Publisher: Abacus
ISBN: 0349140960
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
When Brendan Behan died in 1964 at the age of 41, he had rung the changes in his short life: bomber, gunman, borstal boy, alcoholic and, finally, international literary figure with the success of The Quare Fellow , The Hostage and Borstal Boy . But Behan drowned his talent in a whiskey bottle and became the caricature of an Irish stage drunk, clowning his way with oaths and stories between bars in Dublin, London, Paris and New York. Written in association with his widow, his mother and others of his family and friends, and old IRA comrades, this is a biography of Brendan Behan.

Author: Frank Gray
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781449068950
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description

Author: Carol Rosen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400886503
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
A study of post–World War II plays set in “total institutions” such as hospitals, psychiatric wards, prisons, and military bases Plays of Impasse probes the structure and significance of the numerous and highly visible plays set in contemporary society’s dead ends—the hospitals, psychiatric wards, prisons, and military training camps so aptly described by Irving Goffman as “total institutions.” Carol Rosen shows how the setting in these plays tends to engulf and then to exclude the audience, turning an encompassing stage structure—a closed, controlling, absolute system—into a protagonist that overwhelms the characters. In discussions ranging from Harold Pinter’s The Hothouse to Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, she further maintains that the impasse of characters in reductive environments supplies a unifying image for post–World War II drama in general. This state of impasse pervades contemporary drama. Everyday activities and attempts to endure life in a parenthesis are vacated of traditional social or moral meaning onstage. The pain of this kind of survival, spatially fixed, is at the heart of Endgame, for example, an extreme instance of this mode of drama at the edge of existence. In plays such as Peter Nichols’s The National Health, Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade, Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists, David Storey’s Home, Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow, Jean Genet’s Deathwatch, and David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, the splintered self, like the divided society, strives to endure against enormous, codified odds. Even in plays not depicting the rigidity of institutions, the contemporary dramatic mode is finally characterized by sparse, introspective action in a closed system—an onstage model of a world gone awry, a world at an impasse. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: Ultan Macken
Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd
ISBN: 1856356302
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
This new biography sheds light on the private life of one of Ireland's foremost writers, through his many unpublished and privately held papers and letters. Walter Macken was born in Galway in 1915 and died there in 1967. Originally an actor, principally with an Taidhbhearc in Galway and The Abbey Theatre, he played lead roles on Broadway and also acted in films, notably in Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow. Known for his romanticized portrayal of the Irish and the portrait he painted of the colonial oppression of the people, Macken's writings are outstanding examples of literary efforts to reflect the realities of rural life in Ireland in the last century.

Author: Joan Littlewood
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474233236
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
'Once upon a time, the London theatre was a charming mirror held up to cosiness. Then came Joan Littlewood, smashing the glass, blasting the walls, letting the wind of life blow in a rough, but ready, world. Today, we remember this irresistible force with love and gratitude.' (Peter Brook) Along with Peter Brook, Joan Littlewood, affectionately termed 'The Mother of Modern Theatre', has come to be known as the most galvanising director of mid-twentieth-century Britain, as well as a founder of so many of the practices of contemporary theatre. The best-known work of Littlewood's company, Theatre Workshop, included the development and premieres of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, Brendan Behan's The Hostage and The Quare Fellow, and the seminal Oh What A Lovely War. This autobiography, originally published in 1994, offers an unparalleled first-hand account of Littlewood's extraordinary life and career, from illegitimate child in south-east London to one of the most influential directors and practitioners of our times. It is published along with an introduction by Philip Hedley CBE, previously Artistic Director of Theatre Royal Stratford East and Assistant Director to Joan Littlewood.

Author: Christopher Murray
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815606437
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This work provides an overview of Irish theatre, read in the light of Ireland's self-definition. Mediating between history and its relations with politics and art, it attempts to do justice to the enabling and mirroring preoccupations of Irish drama.

Author: Anthony Cronin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
In this account of life in post-war literary Dublin, Anthony Cronin writes of the frustrations and pathologies of this generation: the excess of drink; the shortage of sex; the insecurity and begrudgery; the limitations of cultural life in mid-century Ireland, and the bittersweet pull of exile.