The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays
by Thomas Conway
HEROIN by Grace Dyas, Trade by Mark O'Halloran, The Art of Swimming by Lynda Radley, Pineapple by Phillip McMahon, I ? Alice ? I by Amy Conroy, The Big Deal edited by Una McKevitt, Oedipus Loves You by Simon Doyle & Gavin Quinn, The Year of Magical Wanking by Neil WatkinsEdited and introduced by Thomas Conway.This anthology comprises eight new plays by Irish playwrights premièred between the years 2006 and 2011.These playwrights ride, however, in no slipstream of the identifiably Irish play. Here, the enterprise of playwriting itself is being re-imagined. Here, above all else, is a commitment to becoming in the theatre.For all that, each play is concerned with what is unfinished business in Ireland. How astonishing, then, that these plays should revolve for the most part around identity and, in particular, sexual identity. How identity comes into play, how we open up the field of play, how we raise into...