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The on and off-stage roles of Abbey Theatre actresses of the
Title
1930s
Author(s) O'Dowd, Ciara
Publication
2016-05-11
Date
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Ciara O’Dowd
B.A. (Mod.) M.A.
09232113

Doctoral Scholar of The College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies
at National University of Ireland, Galway.

The On and Off-Stage Roles of Abbey Theatre Actresses of the 1930s

Supervised by Prof. Adrian Frazier & Prof. Lionel Pilkington
May 2016
Acknowledgments

I am forever in debt to all the people who provided expertise, assistance
and support as I completed this thesis. Professor Adrian Frazier made it all
possible, and I would like to acknowledge his inspirational teaching and
guidance. Thanks are due to all the staff of the English Department,
particularly Professor Lionel Pilkington, Professor Sean Ryder and Dr.
Marie-Louise Coolahan. Thanks to my fellow doctoral students and to
Professor Patrick Lonergan; Dr. Charlotte McIvor; Professors Jill Dolan and
Stacy Wolf of Princeton University; and, for her astute questions at my viva
voce, to Dr. Aoife Monks. I was privileged to be a Doctoral Scholar of the
College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies.

In my archival research, I was ably assisted by Barry Houlihan and all of the
staff of the Hardiman Library Special Collections as well as Carrie Marsh of
Claremont University in California. I have boundless gratitude for those
who shared my passion and helped along the way: Christine Shields;
Katharine Weber; Patrick Laffan; Maev Kennedy and Val Mulkerns; Mary
McCullough; Alma Nowlan; Susan Slott; Helen Sheehy and Finola Finlay.

For their patience, practical support and good humour, I thank my parents,
Patrick and Deirdre, my brothers Killian and Oran and my sisters-in-law
Marina and Hana. I’ve been blessed to have James, Hannah, Shane, Mark,
Rose and Nell accept my eccentricities. Throughout this process, Thomas
Conway held my hand and, when needed, held me up. There are no words
to express the depth of my gratitude, only love.
Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................ 1
Chapter 1: Research Methodologies, Archives and Truths ........................ 8
Chapter 2: Eileen Crowe (1898-1978) and May Craig (1889 – 1972) ........ 39
Chapter 3: Aideen O’Connor (1913 – 1950) ............................................ 94
Chapter 4: Frolie Mulhern (1907 – 1939) .............................................. 166
Chapter 5: Ria Mooney (1903 – 1973) .................................................. 179
Conclusion ........................................................................................... 263
Works Cited ......................................................................................... 270
Interviews Conducted .......................................................................... 286
Appendix 1: Archival Notes .................................................................. 287
Appendix 2: Interview with Pat Laffan ................................................. 301

Introduction Ciara O’Dowd
Introduction
Building on the work of Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes in The
Cambridge Companion to the Actress, this doctoral thesis exposes ‘the
construction of the actress’ in the particular context of the Irish Free State
(1922 – 1937). (2) It examines the life stories of five women who
performed together in the Abbey Theatre Company during the 1930s.
These are life stories that intersect and interweave, that separate and
come together. The five women, Eileen Crowe, May Craig, Aideen
O’Connor, Frolie Mulhern and Ria Mooney, are connected by one thing: a
devotion to Irish theatre. The ‘construction’ of an actress is multi-faceted,
but has two key elements: (1) the training and development of her
theatrical craft, and (2) the professionalization of the individual as a
working performer with the consequent impact of this position on her
place in society. The following chapters examine the careers of each of
these women, detailing many of their performances at the Abbey Theatre
and two particular tours of America by the Abbey Company (1934-35 and
1937-38), to expose these two elements.
Chapter 1 traces the genealogy of theoretical research in this area,
considers the methodologies available and sets out the intervention I seek
to make in the field of theatre history. Chapter 2 focuses on the lives of
Eileen Crowe and May Craig, considering their careers particularly in the
context of their predecessors at the Abbey Theatre and the social context
of the 1930s. Crowe’s career, I argue, is most usefully considered in the
light of the Irish Free State and the female ideal it upheld for nationalist
purposes. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the lives of Aideen O’Connor and
Frolie Mulhern, who joined the company in the 1930s. Chapter 5 traces the
life of Ria Mooney, the development of her artistic vision in New York, and
argues that she was the first feminist director at the Abbey Theatre, whose
contribution to Irish cultural life has been overlooked.
For the editors of The Cambridge Companion, the dominant feature
of ‘the actress’ is her ‘occasional invisibility coupled with her all-pervasive
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Introduction Ciara O’Dowd
significance’. (Gale and Stokes 2) While portraying ‘real’ women, she
retains a unique status as an observer of their lives both on and off stage.
She is, independent of the characters depicted, in a position to understand
the risks and rewards involved in any act of self-presentation by women in
society. This is significant in the context of 1930s Ireland, where women
were particularly vulnerable to what Melissa Sihra terms ‘the monotheistic
patriarchal meta-narrative’, i.e., the power of Church and State. (2)
The theatrical lives explored here have been largely forgotten or
ignored; yet I argue these women are legitimate subjects for an exploration
of the formation of the professional actress in Ireland. In this dissertation, I
draw on much archival material that has hitherto never been collated or
used for scholarly purposes. In each case, I re-constitute archival traces and
strive to capture a sense of the woman herself: her understanding of her
craft, her personal challenges, her achievements and failures. The nature of
the search, challenges and material unearthed is commented upon in each
section and there is a concerted effort, as Susan Bennett urges, ‘to extend
and disturb historiographical method beyond its usual evidence.’ (55)
The length and density of each of the chapters reflects the volume
of archival material about these women. These are partial biographies,
based only on archival traces, and such traces vary from actress to actress.
However, I argue that, presented together, these biographies facilitate the
induction of patterns that allow a deeper understanding of strategies used
by women to further their artistic careers.1 That is to say, where these
women may not have consciously calculated their every career and life
choice, the overall story of their lives as actresses was shaped by their
decisions in tandem with external circumstances and influenced by
prevailing ideologies. Collected together in this manner, these biographies
provide evidence that Irish women who conformed to the dominant

1 In using the term ‘strategy’, I am relying on Joan Wallach Scott’s definition of the
term, being one that enables us to think about how people make decisions in the
face of changing economic circumstances. Scott also says, ‘In addition, we take
strategy to be a shorthand for the application of (culturally specific) perceptions
to the practical (subsistence) demands of daily life.’ (Scott and Tilly 7)
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Introduction Ciara O’Dowd
ideologies on and off the stage of the Abbey Theatre were rewarded with a
level of success, longevity and professional respect in Ireland. Conversely,
women who behaved in a manner viewed as in any way subversive of that
ideology met with resistance that had the capacity to end their careers in
this country and/or to deny them respect they deserved.

The Concept of Role
A key research question is: how do these particular actresses of the
Irish National Theatre learn and play the myriad roles required of them—
on and off the stage? Gale and Stokes suggest using ‘a double lens’ to
consider ‘the loss and disguise of the self in dramatic performance’ while
simultaneously holding in balance ‘the practical and ideological aspects’ of
the career. (2) The agency of the actress, the ability to earn independently
and to publicly represent other women, sits at odds with the requirement
of the actress to conceal her individuality and subsume her own
personality into an on-stage presence. Such agency also conflicted with the
ideologies in Ireland that demanded particular behaviour of women.
Stanislavski, actor and theoretician of the craft, alluded to a
principle similar to this ‘double lens’. His translator Jean Benedetti states:
The actor’s individuality, her own particular way of doing and
saying things, was of paramount importance. At the same time all
the actor’s gifts and talents had to be subordinated to the central
theme of the play. (13)

In researching this thesis, it became evident that such a ‘double
lens’, as suggested by Gale and Stokes, is useful but not adequate.
Something closer to a kaleidoscope is required, allowing as this would for
shifting focus, background and foreground to switch places at various
points, and a full appreciation of the myriad of elements at play at any one
moment in the lives of these women. That said, the concept of ‘role’ was
vital in all aspects and thus demands definition.
Theatre and Stanislavski scholar Sharon Carnicke has explored the
Stanislavskian definition of ‘role’ and how this can be applied in critical
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Introduction Ciara O’Dowd
theory. Carnicke suggests that by ‘role’ Stanislavski meant ‘the words that
serve as a “score” for the actor’s performance, in the same way that notes
provide a “score” for musicians.’ (4) A ‘role’ allows each actor to give a
unique performance, while providing a structure and form that must be
preserved. These paradoxical positions of the actor, repetition coupled
with incessant variation and invisibility coupled with public notoriety,
drove Stanislavski’s thinking. Like his mentor Mikhail Shchepkin,
Stanislavski viewed character-creation as a process not of self-effacement
but of self-transformation. He claimed that a third being was created in this
process, a fusion of the character the author wrote and the actor’s own
personality, ‘the actor/role’. (Benedetti 95) It is this ‘actor/role’ – the two
positions together, distinct and overlapping – that this thesis centres upon.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘role’ as: ‘An actor’s part in a
play, film, etc.’ (‘Role’) However, it has a secondary meaning invoking, the
‘function assumed or part played by a person or thing in a particular
situation.’ (‘Role’) In sociological terms, a ‘role’ denotes particular
behavioural patterns that are connected to social status. The word ‘role’ is
in fact synonymous with ‘capacity’, ‘duty’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘place.’ In
using the phrase ‘roles’ in my title, I am consciously invoking all of the
meanings of this term – considering the place of these women in Irish
society as well as in the theatre, considering their capacity as an Irish
woman and as a performer. The rate of married Irish women in paid
employment remained around the 6% mark from the establishment of Irish
Free State up to the 1960s. (Hill Women 99) Thus, the married actresses
(May Craig and Eileen Crowe) were already in a distinct minority in Ireland.

Potential Role Models: Actresses at the Abbey Theatre prior to the 1930s
The women of the Irish National Theatre Society and of Inghinidhe
na hEireann are a useful starting point in seeking role models for the
actresses of the 1930s. Inghinidhe na hEireann was a radical nationalist
women’s organization, Daughters of Ireland, founded in 1900. In 1902,
several nationalist organisations came together to perform two Irish plays:
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Introduction Ciara O’Dowd
George Russell’s Deirdre and Yeats’ Cathleen Ní Houlihan. (Trotter 74)
Inghinidhe na hEireann members took on vital work as producers,
financiers, ticket sellers and actors. These were a united body of women
from across social classes, but as Mary Trotter has elucidated, ‘Feminism,
nationalism and workers’ rights activity often pulled [these] women in
contradictory directions.’ (73) Some of the playwrights and actors involved
in the 1902 productions went on to form the Irish National Theatre Society
(INTS) a year later. At that point, Inghinidhe na hEireann discontinued
dramatic activity, although some women remained active in both groups.
The women of Inghinidhe na hEireann began to blur the boundaries
between the personal and the political realms that had been so distinct for
women in Irish public life. But it remains that the female performers that
emerged from this movement, most notably Maud Gonne, remained
political and nationalist advocates first and foremost. Even where
members of the group did become devoted to acting, they were always
primarily identified with the political group. Historian R. F. Foster, in writing
of how Gonne, Sara Allgood and others took drama classes organized by
the Inghinidhe, concludes, ‘All of them saw their theatrical activities as an
integral part of nationalist consciousness-raising.’ (Vivid Faces 81)
As Trotter also describes, these women ‘performed not [as] “real”
women but [as] idealised personae, developed from rhetoric of Irish
femininity such as Hibernia and Dark Rosaleen.’ (78-79) Inghinidhe na
hEireann initially presented ‘tableaux’, still images carefully posed to
represent ideas or political moments. When they began rehearsing plays,
Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, the original Nora Burke in In The Shadow of the Glen,
recalled how in rehearsals for the 1903 premiere Frank Fay told her: ‘Be
the mouthpiece of Nora Burke, rather than Nora Burke.’ (qtd in Ritschel 90)
In Fay’s teaching, these were not real or ordinary women, but rather were
the mouthpiece for a particular type of Irish femininity. To perform
typically male political acts, Gonne had to construct and present herself as
an extraordinary woman. She did so with aplomb, but her class and
economic privilege undoubtedly assisted. The stage remained for Gonne
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