Margaretta D'Arcy.com




home about films books radio photos order links contact  

 

LOOSE THEATRE
Memoirs of a Guerrilla Theatre Activist
by Margaretta D'Arcy.
 Trafford Publishing & Women's Pirate Press  ISBN 1-4120-3376-4

"A totally honest autobiography from a unique woman ... a fascinating social and historical document and essential for anyone who has a real interest in true theatre in Ireland and the UK." (Irish Independent)

"The most engaging of scrapbooks and some fabulous moments....Margaretta D'Arcy is the quintessence of the unmanageable revolutionary. And here it is though she is opening a sack of important questions long suppressed."
Donal O'Kelly writing in 'Village'

The collection of memoirs, autobiographical essays and diaries, illustrated by photographs, posters and interviews spans over a century, including -

  • D'Arcy's parents' mixed marriage, between a freedom-fighter in the Old-IRA and a London-Jewish student of Russian emigre origins.
  • D'Arcy's early years of theatre in the colourful bohemian climate of Brendan Behan's Dublin with its small theatre-clubs and acting-companies.
  • Her flight to London to involve herself in the heady days of the Royal Court Theatre and the associated political activism of the 1950s.
  • Her courtship of a Yorkshire virgin, the then unknown playwright John Arden.
  • Their eventual marriage and creative partnership.
  • Their turbulent life together, overcoming tragedy after the death of their firstborn son.
  • Four more sons; bankrupcy, libel actions, jail, and professional isolation due to the war in the North of Ireland and the censoship and disinformation it brought with it.

    Other Books by Margaretta D'Arcy

    Tell Them Everything (Pluto Press, London, 1981) Alternative Best-seller, London 1981.
    "In 1980 Margaretta D'Arcy spent three months in Armagh prison. Her account is always rivetting to read ... her witty insights into her own emotional temperament."  (Time Out)

    Awkward Corners (Methuen, London, 1988.)
    "Always provocative. Arden and D'Arcy are two of the most creative people working in theatre today."
    (Galway Advertiser)

    Galway's Pirate Women, a Global Trawl (Women's Pirate Press, Galway, 1996)
    "What else but a gutsy, variegated, significant and amusing book could be expected of playwright Margaretta? ... Galway's feminist pirate radio which for ten years now has done everything it shouldn't."

    "D'Arcy casts a caustic glance around her milieu of protest and playmaking, whether at her fellow authors in the Theatre Writers' Union or the bitter divisions of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. She never loses her commitment to the theatre as a tool for activism and change."

    For a list of published plays go to www.methuen.co.uk
    also to ProQuest's Twentieth-Century Drama Database, www.proquest.co.uk

    Site design by ARAKNIE

Buy it online
NOW

READ............

Excerpts from the book

The Chapter Headings 

The Index

 

Contact us for more detail

 

 

BUY THIS BOOK