Anne Devlin's 'Ourselves Alone' (1987) and 'After Easter' (1994): autobiographical plays?

摘要

Should we consider the idea that, in Northern Ireland, religion is part and parcel of someone's identity and determines one's nationality, then a Catholic is Irish and a Protestant is British. This is a basic premise that playwright Anne Devlin tries to deconstruct in her two theatre plays, Ourselves Alone and After Easter. In fact, unlike her co-citizens, she was lucky enough to grow up in a Northern Irish Catholic family, the head of which, her father, Paddy Devlin, was renowned for advocating democratic values. Her father had a strong impact on her private life - she soon learnt not to perpetuate the ancestral conflicts between the two communities in her country - as well as on her writing. Even though they may not be entirely autobiographical, her plays are suffused with references to her childhood in Belfast, her father as well as his fight in favour of equal civil rights in Northern Ireland. Yet, despite the exertions of Paddy through politics and of Anne through literature, the divisions seem to be so deeply rooted in people's minds that reunification is still too far away.