‘Haunted by the Past’: Representations of Women in the Plays of Deirdre Kinahan

Abstract

Deirdre Kinahan’s plays feature female characters from a wide range of age, economic and social groups, aiming to reflect a variety of life experiences in contemporary Ireland. Kinahan says she believes that ‘society is made up of diverse groups of people, so everybody who lives and participates within our society deserves to be presented on stage’. However, her narratives focus determinedly on the darker aspects of life; as she notes, ‘I write about abandonment, grief, murder, terrorism, and prostitution … [and] infanticide’. In particular, she focuses on women who are haunted by the past, and frequently portrays characters suffering the ramifications of tragic decisions that have reverberated through time and that have caused lasting damage to family and friendship groups. Her works contain both implicit and explicit messages about power, freedom, unfulfilled desire and entrapment. This essay will address these questions through a close analysis of the texts, in which I aim to explore how Kinahan represents women in five plays, written at different points in her career. Lizbeth Goodman and Jane de Gay suggest that theatre can and should contribute to social change: ‘Theatre can pose questions and offer dilemmas to audiences which are both personal and political, but social change and attitudes towards change are slow. Theatre, by its very nature, is as much a participant in that push as any institution.’ Although it is not my intention to exaggerate the influence of theatre on society as a whole, I want to follow Goodman and de Gay and situate the plays chosen in their cultural context, analysing them from a materialist feminist perspective.