Riot and Great Anger [electronic resource]

Although books, films, and periodicals were subject to Irish government censorship through much of the twentieth century, stage productions were not. The theater became a public space to air cultural confrontations between Church and State, individual and community, and "freedom of the theatre" versus the audience's right to disagree. And disagree they often did. Throughout the twentieth century, Irish performances of new plays by William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, and Sean O'Casey, as well as those of such lesser-known playwrights as George Birmingham, often evoked heated responses from theatergoers, sometimes resulting in riots and public denunciation of playwrights and actors.