Ulster Literary Theatre

Ulster Literary Theatre, the (1902-1934), founded in Belfast by Bulmer Hobson and David Parkhill (pseudonym ‘Lewis Purcell’) with the aim of fusing the principles of Theobald Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen to the ideals of the Irish Literary Theatre [see Abbey Theatre]. Though not initially encouraged by W. B. Yeats, they opened with his Cathleen Ni Houlihan and James Cousins's The Racing Lug in November 1902, describing themselves as the Ulster Branch of the Irish Literary Theatre. In 1904, they again produced Cathleen alongside George Russell's Deirdre, and were served, from Dublin, with notice that they lacked authority to use the name. Changing to the Ulster Literary Theatre, they founded the short-lived literary journal Uladh and announced the intention of writing their own plays. Lewis Purcell's The Reformers (1904), a satire on municipal jobbery, and Hobson's Brian of Banba (1904), incorporating elements from Irish mythology in Yeats's manner, were produced. In ensuing seasons, plays based on local issues, such as The Enthusiast (1905) by Purcell and Turn of the Road (1906) and The Drone (1908) by Rutherford Mayne [see Samuel Waddell], were staged with others on heroic themes such as Joseph Campbell's Little Cowherd of Slainge (1905). These two strands were drawn together in Suzanne and the Sovereigns (1907), a satire on sectarianism in Ulster by Gerald MacNamara, with help from Purcell. Thompson in Tír na nÓg (1912), MacNamara's best-known play, combines the matter of Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne with the idioms of Ulster Orangeism to comic effect. Other writers included Shan Bullock, Lynn Doyle, St John Ervine, George Shiels, and Helen Waddell; but there was a decline in the 1930s.