The Ulster Theatre plays

The Ulster Literary Theatre was formed in 1902 by David Parkhill and Bulmer Hobson, a Quaker active in the Irish Nationalist Movement before the 1916 Easter Rising. Denied permission by Yeats, who had an aversion to all things "Ulster," Hobson defiantly began his own dramatic society. From 1904 until its demise thirty years later, the Ulster Theatre produced over fifty new Ulster plays by such writers as Lynn Doyle, Shan F. Bullock, Helen Waddell, and Gerald MacNamara, who was also one of the society's prominent actors. While many of its productions were performed in Belfast, where it entertained audiences with depictions of Northern life, the society also toured the rest of Ireland, in England, and eventually in New York City. Although the Ulster Theatre may have ultimately failed financially, it succeeded in creating and cultivating the theatrical tradition in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Theatre plays contain scripts of six plays by Ulster writers produced by the Ulster Theatre in Northern Ireland in the early 1900s. The collection also includes a photograph of Ulster Theatre members. The scripts provide a selection of works written and produced in the North after the formation of an Ulster theatrical society. The plays deal with issues of Northern life, which they depict with distinct Ulster jocularity. Although none of the plays produced by the Ulster Theatre achieved the status of those produced by the Abbey Theatre, the national theatre of Ireland, the plays nonetheless stand as testimonies to such creative geniuses of the North as Shan F. Bullock, Bernard Duffy, N. Richard Hayward, and Gerald MacNamara.