Connal Parr
Biographic Data
| ID | 929849 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Connal Parr |
| GIVEN NAMES | Connal |
| FAMILY NAME | Parr |
| SIGNATURE | PARR C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northumbria University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3954-9212 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Drama as Truth Commission
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an internationally regarded – if contested – touchstone for transitional justice, but it functioned above all as exemplary theatre, bringing together thousands of disparate voices. Like the theatrical space generally, it provided a forum for differing narratives about the past to be aired in post-Apartheid South Africa. In Ireland, on the other hand, there has not been – nor are we likely to s…
Northern Ireland’s 1968 at 50
2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the seminal events of Northern Ireland’s 1968: a milestone offering up an opportunity to reassess a pivotal moment in the province’s recent past. This article will argue that the civil rights period has fitted into a common model of the past being used to perpetuate the divisions at the heart of Northern Irish society. It will go on to demonstrate how an innovative methodological and theoretical approach, b…
Ending the siege? David Ervine and the struggle for progressive Loyalism
Drawn from newspapers and interviews with political colleagues, relatives, and conflict intermediaries, this article concerns the late Loyalist political leader David Ervine – an ideal vector through which to explore the recent history and struggle for progressive Loyalism within Protestant working-class East Belfast. It outlines the vital influence of his father, as well as Ervine’s ability to find mentorship in others. It covers his imprisonmen…
The Anger and Energy of Gary Mitchell
Born and brought up on the overwhelmingly Protestant Rathcoole housing estate, Gary Mitchell explored the fragmentation of Ulster Loyalism during the era of the peace process in his key plays and continues to mine the disillusionment and travails of the Protestant working class across Northern Ireland. The Rathcoole focus highlights the dying embers of the Labour movement which carried on in Newtownabbey while the rest of the Northern Ireland Lab…
Stewart Parker, the UWC Strike of May 1974, and Prisons
This chapter explores the UWC strike of May 1974 through the prism of playwright Stewart Parker. A native of East Belfast, Parker experimented with the dramatic form at the same time as structuring his work around the politics, divisions, and contradictions of his own community. The strike led to the destruction of the Sunningdale power-sharing Executive, though this was as much an expression of working-class Protestant power as an assault on the…
Conclusion
We have 53 entries in the Census of Religious Denominations in Northern Ireland—Pentecostal, Elim Tabernacle, House of God, Free Presbyterian. You may split and maybe you are the better for splitting, but fission is part of the identity which is strange, because an identity should be an enclosing thing....
John Hewitt, Sam Thompson, and a Lost Labour Culture
This chapter demonstrates the importance of the Labour movement on two Belfast-born Protestant writers and how this inculcated a socialist conviction quite separate, and antagonistic, to Ulster Unionism. Referencing Sam Thompson’s unpublished plays as well as his trio of performed works, it illuminates his public impact as well as the significance of the play Over the Bridge (1960). John Hewitt’s early political activities and regionalist outlook…
Words as Weapons
‘Culture wars’ in Northern Ireland are literary and rest upon the misperception—and political claim—that Ulster Protestants lack a culture aside from Orangeism. Unionist politicians and Republican writers have accordingly cultivated the myth that Ulster Protestants lack literary heritage and have never been involved in the theatre. The community has internalized a post-conflict ‘defeatism’ and a conviction that it has produced little or nothing o…
Loyal Women? Marie Jones and Christina Reid
Marie Jones and Christina Reid earned critical and commercial success, with the former breaking through with the Charabanc Theatre Company ensemble in 1983 and Reid emerging via the Lyric Theatre contemporaneously. The latter’s plays reveal a far closer affinity with the traditions of her Orange-supporting family than she conveyed in interviews and has been reflected in scholarly literature. While both writers profess Irish identifications, both …
Ron Hutchinson, Graham Reid, and the Hard Eighties
The political and theatrical climate of the 1980s are charted through Graham Reid and Ron Hutchinson, two dramatists who produced their key works in the decade. An apparent (and sentimentalized) ‘golden age’ for Irish and Ulster drama simultaneously accompanied the hardships of deindustrialization. Both writers explored Protestant identity via their exiled trajectories as writers based outside Northern Ireland, reaching large audiences through te…
The Strange Radicalism of Thomas Carnduff and St John Ervine
St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a l…
Seán Murray
Seán Murray: Marxist-Leninist and Irish socialist republican." Irish Studies Review, 25(4), pp. 515–516
Something Happening Quietly
This article concerns the Belfast dramatist Owen McCafferty (1961–) and his play Quietly, which debuted at the Abbey's Peacock Theatre in November 2012. Considering antecedents in McCafferty's earlier work, it illustrates how the play reflects a longstanding and contemporary condition whereby individuals in Northern Ireland deal with the legacy of the Troubles on their own terms, essentially bypassing elected representatives engaged in polemical …
Inventing the Myth
This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers–some of whom have been notably active in political life—it uniquely examines tensions going on within. Through its exploration of class division and drama from the early twentieth century to the present, the book restores th…
Protestant identity and peace in Northern Ireland
This is one of those books which appears to have slipped under the radar but should one day be considered important. It shifts track from those studies of Ulster Protestantism which invariably focu
The pens of the defeated
Telescoping the political lives and work of Sam Thompson and John Hewitt, this article demonstrates the importance of the Labour movement on both Belfast-born Protestant writers and how this inculcated a socialist conviction quite separate and antagonistic to Ulster unionism. Referencing Thompson's unpublished, largely unknown plays as well as newspapers and his trio of performed works, the article illuminates his public impact as well as the sig…
The Politics of Memoir and the Northern Ireland Conflict
Ireland's Violent Frontier
There is no doubt this book is intended to shake things up and have an impact beyond a purely academic readership. But then again, the questions Henry Patterson was preoccupied with all the way bac
Solitary and wild’
David Fitzpatrick, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2011, 440 pp, €40.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781843511946 One of the stand-out pieces in Fran Brearton and Edna Longley's anthology Incorrigibly Plural: Louis M
Managing His Aspirations
This article explores the diverging Labour and republican politics of Paddy Devlin. It argues Devlin downplays his Irish republican past, especially in his autobiography, in favour of a Labour profile he retrospectively regards as preferable. It assesses different phases of his career, from the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to the time of the 1981 hunger strikes and pronouncements beyond. The article co…
Inventing the Myth
This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers–some of whom have been notably active in political life—it uniquely examines tensions going on within. Through its exploration of class division and drama from the early twentieth century to the present, the book restores th…
Something Happening Quietly
This article concerns the Belfast dramatist Owen McCafferty (1961–) and his play Quietly, which debuted at the Abbey's Peacock Theatre in November 2012. Considering antecedents in McCafferty's earlier work, it illustrates how the play reflects a longstanding and contemporary condition whereby individuals in Northern Ireland deal with the legacy of the Troubles on their own terms, essentially bypassing elected representatives engaged in polemical …
The Politics of Memoir and the Northern Ireland Conflict
Ireland's Violent Frontier
There is no doubt this book is intended to shake things up and have an impact beyond a purely academic readership. But then again, the questions Henry Patterson was preoccupied with all the way bac
Solitary and wild’
David Fitzpatrick, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2011, 440 pp, €40.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781843511946 One of the stand-out pieces in Fran Brearton and Edna Longley's anthology Incorrigibly Plural: Louis M
Managing His Aspirations
This article explores the diverging Labour and republican politics of Paddy Devlin. It argues Devlin downplays his Irish republican past, especially in his autobiography, in favour of a Labour profile he retrospectively regards as preferable. It assesses different phases of his career, from the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to the time of the 1981 hunger strikes and pronouncements beyond. The article co…
Managing His Aspirations
This article explores the diverging Labour and republican politics of Paddy Devlin. It argues Devlin downplays his Irish republican past, especially in his autobiography, in favour of a Labour profile he retrospectively regards as preferable. It assesses different phases of his career, from the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to the time of the 1981 hunger strikes and pronouncements beyond. The article co…
Solitary and wild’
David Fitzpatrick, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2011, 440 pp, €40.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781843511946 One of the stand-out pieces in Fran Brearton and Edna Longley's anthology Incorrigibly Plural: Louis M
The pens of the defeated
Telescoping the political lives and work of Sam Thompson and John Hewitt, this article demonstrates the importance of the Labour movement on both Belfast-born Protestant writers and how this inculcated a socialist conviction quite separate and antagonistic to Ulster unionism. Referencing Thompson's unpublished, largely unknown plays as well as newspapers and his trio of performed works, the article illuminates his public impact as well as the sig…
The Politics of Memoir and the Northern Ireland Conflict
Ireland's Violent Frontier
There is no doubt this book is intended to shake things up and have an impact beyond a purely academic readership. But then again, the questions Henry Patterson was preoccupied with all the way bac
Protestant identity and peace in Northern Ireland
This is one of those books which appears to have slipped under the radar but should one day be considered important. It shifts track from those studies of Ulster Protestantism which invariably focu
The Anger and Energy of Gary Mitchell
Born and brought up on the overwhelmingly Protestant Rathcoole housing estate, Gary Mitchell explored the fragmentation of Ulster Loyalism during the era of the peace process in his key plays and continues to mine the disillusionment and travails of the Protestant working class across Northern Ireland. The Rathcoole focus highlights the dying embers of the Labour movement which carried on in Newtownabbey while the rest of the Northern Ireland Lab…
Stewart Parker, the UWC Strike of May 1974, and Prisons
This chapter explores the UWC strike of May 1974 through the prism of playwright Stewart Parker. A native of East Belfast, Parker experimented with the dramatic form at the same time as structuring his work around the politics, divisions, and contradictions of his own community. The strike led to the destruction of the Sunningdale power-sharing Executive, though this was as much an expression of working-class Protestant power as an assault on the…
Conclusion
We have 53 entries in the Census of Religious Denominations in Northern Ireland—Pentecostal, Elim Tabernacle, House of God, Free Presbyterian. You may split and maybe you are the better for splitting, but fission is part of the identity which is strange, because an identity should be an enclosing thing....
John Hewitt, Sam Thompson, and a Lost Labour Culture
This chapter demonstrates the importance of the Labour movement on two Belfast-born Protestant writers and how this inculcated a socialist conviction quite separate, and antagonistic, to Ulster Unionism. Referencing Sam Thompson’s unpublished plays as well as his trio of performed works, it illuminates his public impact as well as the significance of the play Over the Bridge (1960). John Hewitt’s early political activities and regionalist outlook…
Words as Weapons
‘Culture wars’ in Northern Ireland are literary and rest upon the misperception—and political claim—that Ulster Protestants lack a culture aside from Orangeism. Unionist politicians and Republican writers have accordingly cultivated the myth that Ulster Protestants lack literary heritage and have never been involved in the theatre. The community has internalized a post-conflict ‘defeatism’ and a conviction that it has produced little or nothing o…
Loyal Women? Marie Jones and Christina Reid
Marie Jones and Christina Reid earned critical and commercial success, with the former breaking through with the Charabanc Theatre Company ensemble in 1983 and Reid emerging via the Lyric Theatre contemporaneously. The latter’s plays reveal a far closer affinity with the traditions of her Orange-supporting family than she conveyed in interviews and has been reflected in scholarly literature. While both writers profess Irish identifications, both …
Ron Hutchinson, Graham Reid, and the Hard Eighties
The political and theatrical climate of the 1980s are charted through Graham Reid and Ron Hutchinson, two dramatists who produced their key works in the decade. An apparent (and sentimentalized) ‘golden age’ for Irish and Ulster drama simultaneously accompanied the hardships of deindustrialization. Both writers explored Protestant identity via their exiled trajectories as writers based outside Northern Ireland, reaching large audiences through te…
The Strange Radicalism of Thomas Carnduff and St John Ervine
St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a l…
Seán Murray
Seán Murray: Marxist-Leninist and Irish socialist republican." Irish Studies Review, 25(4), pp. 515–516
Something Happening Quietly
This article concerns the Belfast dramatist Owen McCafferty (1961–) and his play Quietly, which debuted at the Abbey's Peacock Theatre in November 2012. Considering antecedents in McCafferty's earlier work, it illustrates how the play reflects a longstanding and contemporary condition whereby individuals in Northern Ireland deal with the legacy of the Troubles on their own terms, essentially bypassing elected representatives engaged in polemical …
Inventing the Myth
This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers–some of whom have been notably active in political life—it uniquely examines tensions going on within. Through its exploration of class division and drama from the early twentieth century to the present, the book restores th…
Ending the siege? David Ervine and the struggle for progressive Loyalism
Drawn from newspapers and interviews with political colleagues, relatives, and conflict intermediaries, this article concerns the late Loyalist political leader David Ervine – an ideal vector through which to explore the recent history and struggle for progressive Loyalism within Protestant working-class East Belfast. It outlines the vital influence of his father, as well as Ervine’s ability to find mentorship in others. It covers his imprisonmen…
Northern Ireland’s 1968 at 50
2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the seminal events of Northern Ireland’s 1968: a milestone offering up an opportunity to reassess a pivotal moment in the province’s recent past. This article will argue that the civil rights period has fitted into a common model of the past being used to perpetuate the divisions at the heart of Northern Irish society. It will go on to demonstrate how an innovative methodological and theoretical approach, b…
Drama as Truth Commission
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an internationally regarded – if contested – touchstone for transitional justice, but it functioned above all as exemplary theatre, bringing together thousands of disparate voices. Like the theatrical space generally, it provided a forum for differing narratives about the past to be aired in post-Apartheid South Africa. In Ireland, on the other hand, there has not been – nor are we likely to s…
Irish and British Studies (19 works) · Political science (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · History (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Art (12 works) · Protestantism (12 works) · Irish (9 works)