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Paul O’Brien, the first Irish critic to publish a full-length political biography of Sean O\u2019Casey from a left-wing perspective, talks to Jenny Farrell<\/strong> about some largely unknown aspects of the first proletarian dramatist of international significance writing in English.<\/em><\/p>\n Despite four major biographies in existence, O\u2019Brien felt that \u201cthey offered no real examination explaining O\u2019Casey\u2019s development in terms of his political route from a young man involved with the Gaelic League and the IRB, and later the ICA, the socialist and then the communist movement. This background made O\u2019Casey one of the most political writers of his generation.\u201d<\/p>\n However, as O\u2019Brien insists, while politics were central to O\u2019Casey\u2019s life, equally important was the artistic craft of writing drama. As a young man, he absorbed the works of Shakespeare and Boucicault. Alongside such significant influences as Jim Larkin and Charles Darwin, his fellow Dubliner Bernard Shaw made a lifelong impact: \u201cShaw transformed his view of drama and politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Initially, it was Shaw\u2019s extensive prefaces that interested O\u2019Casey, and later the plays themselves. While O\u2019Casey\u2019s first unproduced dramas were Shaw-inspired discussion plays, it is only in his later work that he achieves the Shavian fusion of forceful intelligence and comic invention that was to become a hallmark of his own writing.<\/p>\n The Plough and the Stars<\/em> is indebted to Shaw\u2019s Saint Joan<\/em> in the way it artistically fuses the drama and the politics. Shaw had stood with the locked-out workers in 1913, and underwent a significant change in 1916, overcoming his reservations about republicanism and demanding that Britain end the executions of the leaders of the rebellion. O\u2019Casey later remarked \u201cthat it was Shaw and Larkin who swung him to the left more than any other single influence.\u201d<\/p>\n Exploring why O\u2019Casey, despite his prolific output, is almost exclusively known for his Dublin trilogy, O\u2019Brien points first to the hostile reception in Dublin of The Plough and the Stars<\/em>, and in particular to the rejection by Yeats in 1928 of The Silver Tassie<\/em>, although O\u2019Casey\u2019s plays had saved The Abbey from financial ruin earlier in the decade.<\/p>\n However, \u201cthe Establishment resented the themes of O\u2019Casey\u2019s post-Dublin plays, their open and satirical representation of the Church-state relationship in the Irish Free State in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy <\/em>or The Bishop\u2019s Bonfire<\/em>, the expressionist treatment of the 1929 economic crisis in The Gates Flew Open<\/em>, his support for the Spanish Republic in The Star Turns Red<\/em>, with its exploration of the relationship between the Church and fascism \u2014 all of which were an anathema to the Irish Establishment.<\/p>\n \u201cThey turned their back on O\u2019Casey and despite the occasional staging of plays other than the Dublin trilogy, such as the celebrated production of The Drums of Father Ned<\/em>, at the Gaiety Theatre (1955), these later plays are rarely produced.\u201d<\/p>\n This was in stark contrast to the socialist countries. \u201cThe USSR published the first bibliography of his work (1964) and his plays were widely performed there. O\u2019Casey was in contact with the Soviet cultural establishment as early as 1925, through the Soviet emissary Raissa Lomonovska; he also met and admired the Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein. His support for the Soviet Union strengthened during and after World War II. His plays were staged there not only in mainstream theatres but also by working-class theatre groups across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n The roots of his popularity in East Germany in particular go back to the 1920s, to the influence of the communist dramatists and innovators such as Brecht, Toller and Piscator.<\/p>\n \u201cToller\u2019s Transformations<\/em> influenced The Silver Tassie<\/em>, and generally these playwrights inspired O\u2019Casey\u2019s own experimentation with dramatic form.\u201d After 1945, this radical theatre tradition was one of the reasons why O\u2019Casey was performed in both German states. In West Germany, despite being championed by the acclaimed director Peter Zadek, disturbances took place during the performance of The Silver Tassie<\/em> in 1953 and in 1968, when the audiences rioted and walked out of The Star Turns Red<\/em>.<\/p>\n In the GDR, on the other hand, Brecht\u2019s Berliner Ensemble or Langhoff\u2019s Deutsches Theater, but also many theatres throughout the Republic were receptive to his work. \u201cPurple Dust<\/em> ran in repertoire for 12 years,\u201d and is still available on film from the Berliner Ensemble production.<\/p>\n O\u2019Casey was one of the most widely performed Western dramatists in the GDR. \u201cHis work enjoyed similar popularity across the Soviet Bloc, while Dublin, London and New York stages turned their backs on him.\u201d Partly, O\u2019Brien explains, this was \u201cdue to the challenges of integrating the tragic and comic expressionist techniques, as envisioned by O\u2019Casey. But also, his critics felt that O\u2019Casey had \u2018lost his way,\u2019 was no longer in touch with mainstream theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, the working-class theatre companies were much more open to O\u2019Casey\u2019s plays. Nevertheless, \u201ctheir own tradition of and focus on agit-prop theatre and the realist tradition did not lend itself very well to O\u2019Casey\u2019s lyrical, imaginative and non-realist style.\u201d<\/p>\n When the Abbey turned down The Star Turns Red<\/em> in 1939, and the play was banned in Britain by the Lord Chamberlain\u2019s Office, Unity Theatre put on a production that ran for 12 weeks.\u201d O\u2019Brien explains, \u201cO\u2019Casey enjoyed a good relationship with Unity Theatre in their common pursuit to bring drama to the working class. The example of Unity Theatre inspired the foundation of The New Theatre Group in Dublin and the Left Book Club Dramatic Group Belfast in 1937. They were also influenced by the New York Group Theatre, perhaps the most innovative ensemble in the Western world at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n However, \u201cthe repertoire of these working-class-based companies were largely directly political in their purpose, favouring the Living Newspaper style of theatre, chants, loudhailers and other forms associated with agitprop.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about O\u2019Casey and the working-class cultural tradition today, O\u2019Brien says \u201cO\u2019Casey\u2019s shorter one and two-act plays, such as Hall of Healing<\/em> would be highly suited to amateur working-class theatre groups who are in a unique position to highlight the contemporary relevance of O\u2019Casey\u2019s work. Some attempts have been made in Dublin by the \u00c1NU Theatre Group, and the East Wall History Group in conjunction with the Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey Centre.\u201d<\/p>\n But we await a full retrospective of his entire work, \u201cO\u2019Casey was the Abbey\u2019s most successful playwright \u2014 they owe him that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul O’Brien, the first Irish critic to publish a full-length political biography of Sean O\u2019Casey from a left-wing perspective, talks to Jenny Farrell about some largely unknown…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":15728,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1662],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}