NUI Galway and Abbey Theatre release digitised Abbey Minute Books, 1904-1939

This week the Abbey Theatre/NUI Galway Digital Archive Partnership made freely available online the digitised minute books of the Abbey Theatre 1904 – 1939.

As part of the Yeats2015 celebrations, the online digital archive of Abbey Theatre Minute Books will be made available to the public for the first time. Collectively, the minute books amount to nearly 1,000 pages, covering some of the Abbey’s most significant events from the period 1904-1939, being the period that spans Yeats' lifetime.

'A Digital Journey Through Irish Theatre History', the Abbey Theatre - NUI Galway Digital Archive Partnership is the largest digital theatre project ever undertaken, and heralds a new era in Irish theatre scholarship, both nationally and internationally. Previously unseen, the Abbey Theatre Minute Books include the period in history when both Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats were involved in the management of the Abbey Theatre.

The Abbey Theatre minute books contain notes from meetings of the theatre’s Board of Directors. They offer a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of the theatre, showing how the Abbey’s managers dealt with a variety of issues, from choosing plays to determining how much to pay their actors.Along the way, we find important information about leading figures from the Irish Literary Revival and beyond: not just W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge but Sean O’Casey, Lennox Robinson, Teresa Deevy, Sean O’Faolain, Frank O’Connor, and many others. We also learn about great Irish actors such as Molly Allgood, Ria Mooney, Barry Fitzgerald, Cyril Cusack and many more.

Prof. Patrick Lonergan

NUI Galway Professor of Drama Patrick Lonergan said that the minute book will be of huge interest to theatre scholars, historians, and anyone with an interest in Irish culture: “the story of the Abbey Theatre is in many ways the story of our nation in microcosm. This online resource shows the Abbey Theatre and NUI Galway working together to reveal new aspects of that theatre’s story – and, by extension, new aspects of the story of Ireland. Users of the site will be able to search easily through hundreds of pages of records, and can move between the handwritten originals and carefully transcribed webpages. And all of this is available entirely free of charge to readers anywhere in the world.”

The minute books allow us to understand better how theatres are run. Yeats wrote about his approach to theatre business in a poem that was tellingly called “The Fascination of What’s Difficult”, cursing “plays/ that have to be set up in fifty ways”. Here we find Yeats encountering all sorts of difficulties - from the threat of government censorship of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars in 1926 to the leaking of his late play Purgatory to a Jesuit priest in 1938. And those difficulties are indeed fascinating.

Dr Charlotte McIvor, lecturer in drama and performance at NUIG, said that the books contain valuable information for scholars and teachers. She said: “I think they are going to be very important in explaining to students the different kinds of labour involved in running a theatre.”Dr McIvor said the books document “in minute detail” the decisions of the board right down to discussions about whether or not to allow cigarette smoking in the theatre. “I think you could honestly take any two pages in these books and build a successful lesson around it,” she added.

Dr. Charlotte McIvor

Playwright and Abbey board member Thomas Kilroy said the books help illuminate the relationship between the early theatre and the changing Irish State.He said: “One extraordinary thing which I had never heard of before which was that in 1939 Dublin Corporation tried to establish stage censorship. They assembled a number of inspectors to establish what was going on in Irish theatres.”

We also learn much about the day to day activities of keeping a theatre in business: the struggles to find appropriate funding, the actors’ requests for extra money or time off, and the maintenance of the building. And of course we learn much about Ireland, both before and after independence. The Abbey Theatre famously was the first state-subsidised theatre in the English-speaking world, earning funding in 1925 from the newly independent Irish Free State.

Bryan McMahon, Chairman of the Abbey Theatre said:  “The Abbey Theatre is proud to reveal, for the first time, our early Minute Books, an exciting milestone in our ground-breaking digital archive partnership with NUI Galway.   It is wonderful to manifest digitally the inner workings of the national theatre during its formative years.  These Minute Books give us fascinating insights into the management style and business acumen of W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory and the contribution made by the Board of Directors.  Indeed, the Minute Books reveal that Yeats was so integral to the Abbey Theatre, that Lennox Robinson, playwright and Board member, was dispatched to France to assist in the repatriation of his remains.  As we all know, it was an unsuccessful mission.  The Abbey Theatre is delighted that in this Yeats’ commemorative year, the full story of W.B. Yeats as theatre maker can be fully revealed.”

The Abbey Theatre Minute Books can be viewed www.nuigalway.ie/abbeytheatreminutebooks/

Excerpt from the Abbey Theatre digitised minute books

Explore our unique Archives Collections online!

We recently introduced a new web interface through which you can browse the archives collections of the James Hardiman Library online.

Here are 5 ways in which your research could be transformed by this exciting new development!

1. Archives are amazing sources of inspiration. They hold an abundance of potential research material that can be applied to virtually any discipline to create innovative research. The catalogue could hold the key to unlocking your next research project, and you will never know unless you look!

2. Even if you don't unlock your next research project, simply by browsing through the Showcase and Image Gallery sections of the page, you are certain to find out about something or someone new.

3. The enhanced search functionality afforded by this new service means you can carry out keyword searches across the entire catalogue. This means you can browse over 20,000 records from 350 collections simultaneously, bringing insights from other sources to light that you may not have considered before now.

4. The archives catalogue is one part of a new suite of tools aimed at opening up our archives. Why not look at the catalogue alongside some of our digital projects which are available on https://digital.library.nuigalway.ie/. Keep an eye out for new projects on this page, and you can still find our older digital projects on http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/digitisedarchives/. These will be migrated to the new system soon.

5. Finding something you are interested in on our catalogue gives you the perfect excuse to work in our beautiful reading room, located on the ground floor of the Hardiman Research Building in the heart of NUI Galway's campus.

Check it out now on http://archivesearch.library.nuigalway.ie/. Happy Browsing!

Library Ireland Week Special Lecture - David Roberts Tour and Illustrations of the Holy Land 1838-39

Between 1842-1845 the Scottish artist David Roberts published two lavish volumes of lithographed prints. The prints depicted sketches made by Roberts on a tour which included Egypt, Sinai, Idumea (modern day Petra) and the Holy Land in 1838-39. Appearing in different editions the Roberts volumes are famous amongst book collectors, art historians and archaeologists for their depiction of places and historical monuments in the Middle East over 175 years ago.

To celebrate the theme of Library Ireland week which this year is “A Library holds a World of Ideas” our Special Collections librarian, Marie Boran, will give a talk on the Hardiman Library’s copies of these splendid volumes.

Date: Friday 20 November

Time: 13.00

Venue: Room G011, Hardiman Research Building, NUI, Galway

All welcome

New Play from the Archives - Mary O'Malley, The Lyric Theatre and W.B. Yeats in Northern Ireland

NUI GALWAY AND LYRIC THEATRE BELFAST IN A DRAMATIC COLLABORATION TO CELEBRATE THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARY O’MALLEY AND THE WORK OF W.B YEATS IN NORTHERN IRELAND. 

As part of the Arts in Action programme, two students from the centre for Drama and Theatre, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies at NUI Galway, Martin Kenny and Beau Holland with two drama students from the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, Luke Bannon and Sarah Blair,  will work together with Caroline Lynch, Writer, Actress, NUI Galway graduate and Theatre Director, to present a new piece of writing based on the extensive archive of Mary O’Malley and the Lyric Theatre, which is held at the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway and researched by archivist Barry Houlihan.

This collaboration is a unique occasion for the student actors from Galway and Belfast to meet and work together on a project whose central character was full of determination and belief in the power of theatre to bring individuals together and turn them into a group whose power is greater than the sum of its parts. By exploring the Lyric Theatre archive of the James Hardiman Library, the story of Mary O’Malley’s journey and the history of Yeats’ work in Northern Ireland will reach new audiences in this the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.B. Yeats.

The Lyric Theatre archive is a detailed record of the growth and development of the theatre and its founding director, Mary O’Malley. This event will mine and explore that archive, share new material and present a live event that will draw the audience into the Yeats-inspired Belfast and world of Mary O’Malley and the birth of a new theatre across a time of immense social, political and artistic change.

 Mary O’Malley (Hickey), was born in Mallow, Co. Cork in 1918 and would develop from her childhood a life-long passion and enthusiasm for the theatre. O’Malley describes her “first big adventure” to the theatre being at age six and seeing Dion Boucicault’s Colleen Bawn at the local town hall in Mallow, and was “wildly excited by it”. O’Malley’s first visit to the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, aged thirteen, accompanied by her older brother, Gerard, allowed O’Malley to see W.B. Yeats in the flesh and experience being at the National Theatre. This would be the beginning of a continuous connection between O’Malley and the artistic and theatrical spirit of Yeats.

Following a move to Dublin, Mary would meet Pearce O’Malley, a doctor and graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast and they married in September 1947 and moved to Belfast.

It is in the O’Malley family home in Belfast that Mary established the Lyric Players. Along with a group of friends and family, O’Malley directed, designed and produced an extraordinary volume of work, beginning in 1951, notably the plays of W.B. Yeats and leading European playwrights which were not often staged in Ireland at the time. The first season in 1951 consisted of three plays, including At the Hawk’s Well by W.B. Yeats. Yeats was a foundational, constant presence and influence on O’Malley and the endeavours of the Lyric Players and the Lyric Theatre, from their journey of amateur to professional and forging ahead to become a ‘National’ theatre for Northern Ireland.
The tension and fragility of peace and life in Northern Ireland was a further influence on the Lyric Theatre as it developed in the backdrop to the emerging Civil Rights movement and later throughout the Troubles. O’Malley would recount how at the point of breakdown of the Sunningdale talks in 1974, “In my bones, and for the first time, I felt a certain despair.” The political position of Northern Ireland and the ongoing conflict would resonate through O’Malley’s formidable personality and incidents such as controversy regarding the playing of the British National Anthem at the theatre, which would see O’Malley step-down from the Lyric Theatre Board for a period of time.


The growth of the Lyric Players group to the Lyric Theatre as we know it today, from amateur to professional, is an incredible journey and which is dominated by the tireless work and vision of Mary O’Malley. The presence of Yeats is embodied in the Lyric Theatre. The growth of the theatre was a cultural revolution for Northern Ireland as much as the Abbey Theatre was in the South. 

Mary O'Malley at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast

All Welcome!

Venue: The Cube

Date: 19^th November

Time: 1-2pm

Admission: Free

Honouring Stephen Rea at NUI Galway

NUI Galway has this week honoured the acclaimed Irish actor, Stephen Rea, by conferring on him an Honorary Doctor of Arts Degree. Rea has amassed a career in the performing arts on both stage and screen that has seen him portray a rich lineage of complex characters who are deeply connected to the Ireland of its time and place and also to an international connection to the wider world.

In advance of the conferring ceremonies, Dr Jim Browne, President of NUI Galway, said:

“NUI Galway is fortunate to be associated with many outstanding honorary graduates throughout its history. This week we are very proud to honour Stephen Rea for his outstanding and distinctive contribution to the world of culture, theatre and film in Ireland and far beyond. NUI Galway is very pleased to be in a position to recognise his exceptional talent and achievement. On behalf of the University I congratulate Stephen and each of the 2,500 students who will be conferred with degrees this week from NUI Galway. ”

Dr Charlotte McIvor, Lecturer in the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, delivered the citation in honour of Rea paid tribute diverse range of work over forty years in the Arts:

"Stephen Rea  has taken us around the world and through time, inhabiting souls whose fragile and often violently conflicted layers of self have laid bare struggles for identity and connection that are fundamental to the human condition.   He is one of the most recognizable faces of the stage and screen, yet always unfamiliar, shape-shifting to meet the terms of the worlds he has inhabited through his work. Through his characters, he has brought us face to face again and again with the brutal and divisive politics of our small island and elsewhere."

Within the archive collections of the Hardiman Library there is a vast array of records that document and highlight the relationships between Rea and writers, playwrights, directors and theatres that have shaped his career. A key relationship is to Irish theatre via Field Day Theatre Company, whom Rea was a founding member and also the connection with the playwright Thomas Kilroy, himself a later member of Field Day and the author of Double Cross, written for Rea and produced in 1986. The plays of Brian Friel again have a large presence in the archives through Field Day records but also via the archive of the Abbey Theatre, digitally available at the Hardiman Library, along with the Thomas Kilroy archive and many other related literary and theatrical collections.

The Kilroy archive contains manuscript drafts and notes of the play Double Cross, programmes and flyers and also correspondence with Rea as well as a range of records relating to Field Day Theatre Company.

Rea starred in many Friel premieres for the Abbey Theatre, including the Freedom of the City (1973) and Aristocrats in 1979 and also Making History for Field Day Theatre Company at Derry in 1988.

Here is a selection of some archive material from these productions as we honour an congratulate Stephen Rea.

For more coverage of the honourary conferring and for video interviews with Rea please click here.

Brian Friel - An Appreciation

It is with great sadness that we note the laying to rest of Brian Friel yesterday. A quick look through our archival holdings shows the range and influence of Brian as a playwright and a friend to various theatre people for well over fifty years. From writers such as John McGahern and Thomas Kilroy, to a variety of theatre companies and actors, the energy and enthusiasm he brought to Irish theatre is clearly visible. In September 1963 the Lyric Theatre staged "The Enemy Within".

Featuring George Mooney in the role of Columba, it was one of a number of plays staged by the Lyric Theatre Company from young emerging Irish writers in the late fifties and early sixties.

Another play which features strongly in our collections is the "Loves of Cass Maguire". Siobhan McKenna's role as Cass in the Abbey's 1967 production introduced one of the most enduring characters to an Irish audience.



It was also one of the plays staged by the Druid Theatre Company in their opening production in the Summer of 1975, revived in 1996 for the 21st anniversary production, both productions starring Marie Mullen.

  

The Abbey Theatre Digital Archive, uniquely available at NUI Galway, captures the legacy and engagement of Brian Friel with Ireland's national theatre. The Abbey would première some of Friel's most powerful plays from the 1970s to present day, including The Freedom of the City (1973) Volunteers (1975) Living Quarters (1977) Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) Wonderful Tennessee (1993). The Abbey archive contains scripts, prompt scripts with detailed annotations, posters, programmes and recorded videos of performances of many of Friel's landmark works.



With around ninety references to Brian in our archives catalogue, why not take a virtual tour through our holdings to appreciate the impact of one of Ireland's great playwrights on Irish theatre. Visit: https://archivesearch.library.universityofgalway.ie/

A Nation Rising

This morning marks the launch of NUI Galway's calendar of events to commemorate 1916, A Nation Rising and the Archives Service is delighted to be hosting the launch here in the Special Collections Reading Room. A programme of events is available at http://www.nuigalway.ie/anationrising/

The archives service holds a range of material that refers to the events of 1916, some of which have a particular Galway focus. First of all there are the records from the College itself, which highlight the impact on the University in terms of staff and students arrested without trial in the immediate aftermath of the rising.

There is also an intriguing entry in the University's visitor book from the 4th August 1899 when Patrick and William Pearse sign their names in Irish. Pearse himself said that he first heard Irish spoken as a living language here in Galway, and it may well have been on this visit that this happened.

Other holdings in the James Hardiman Library Archives emphasise the links between the University and the events of 1916 and its commemoration. The Brian Cusack Papers show the student life of Dr. Brian Cusack, winner of the Moffet Medal for academic achievement presented by the President each year, for 1913. He was later to become the representative for Galway at the first Dail when it sat in early 1919.

Other material, from the G.A. Hayes-McCoy collection emphasise the commemoration of the Rising in 1966. Other items in our holdings include a special edition of the "Connacht Tribune" during the Rising detailing events in Oranmore and Carnmore in the outskirts of the town, as well as rumours of what was happening in Dublin.

From the Prionnsias Mac an Bheatha Collection there is copy of a special edition of the Irish language newspaper 'Inniu', which Prionnsias edited, commemorating the Rising in 1966.

Information on these items and other material relating to this time can be accessed at our archives catalogue and is available for researchers in the Special Collections Reading Room.