Abstract
While writers such as Friel and Murphy seemed to provide a certain continuity in the closing years of the twentieth century, and opening years of the twenty-first century, a new generation of writers emerged for whom the Irish dramatic tradition seemed less an inheritance than a foil to be played against (or with) or, in some cases, an irrelevance. For instance, while Martin McDonagh's work was sometimes associated with British 'in-yer-face' theatre of the 1990s, to some commentators his work made more sense as a subversion of an earlier Irish tradition.
In the case of Conor McPherson, the breakdown of a community that made a shared theatre culture possible was registered in a turn to monologue, while writers such as Mark O'Rowe and Enda Walsh showed a freedom of dramatic form and a set of dramatic concerns reflecting immersion in a mediatized, globalized late modernity. This chapter analyses the nature of these disruptions in Irish theatrical tradition.