User:Soniahamdan/sandbox

1. Id like to make the introduction a bit longer, I dont think one sentence suffices to introduce Teresa Deevy considering her amount of work. Id like to include a bit of information from each section (for exemple : he works on the radio and adaptations on television) as well as most of the information int he "Background " section. So Basically I'd make the background section merge into an introduction where id go in depth in her personal life and introduce the following sections.

2. In the section "Work on Radio", I have way more to add than whats already presented. Id like to include the names of the plays and mention What was broadcasted on Éireann/RTE and what was broadcasted on BBC.

3. Id like like to elaborate in the section "Later Life and Death". I will include Post-death works done by others either in her honour or as adaptations of her plays. How the people and scholars reacted to her death and whats dedicated to her.

4. Even though there are some talk of her addressing the topics of sexuality, marriage and feminism in the section "At the Abbey theatre", Id like to add how her plays also attacked the topics of European Catholicism and Irish Nationalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soniahamdan (talk • contribs) 18:24, 22 October 2018 (UTC)\

= Teresa Deevy = From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Teresa Deevy (21 January 1894 – 19 January 1963) was a deaf Irish dramatist, short story writer, and writer for radio.

Background [edit]
Deevy was born in Passage Road, Waterford city, Ireland, in the family home named 'Landscape'. She was the youngest of thirteen children. Her father, Edward Deevy, was a farmer and then a draper, who died when Deevy was two years old. She was then reared by her mother and seven sisters. Deevy attended the Ursuline Convent in Waterford and in 1913, aged 19, she enrolled in University College Dublin, to become a teacher. However, that same year, Deevy became deaf through Ménière's disease and had to relocate to University College Cork so she could receive treatment in the Cork Ear, Eye, and Throat Hospital, while also being closer to the family home. In 1914 she went to London to learn lip-reading and returned to Ireland in 1919. She started writing plays and contributing articles and stories to the press around 1919. Deevy wrote around twenty-five plays between 1930 and 1958. Deevy is amongst the post-revolutionary movement which also includes Irish writers such as Frank O’Connor and Liam O’Flaherty. Her work, however, tends to deviate from the style of these writers and heavily emphasizes on women’s oppression within Irish society.

At the Abbey Theatre[edit]
In 1930 Deevy had her first production at the Abbey Theatre, Reapers. Many more followed in rapid succession, such as In Search of Valour, Temporal Powers, The King of Spain's Daughter and Katie Roche, the play she is perhaps best known for. These works came just after writers such as W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory and many believed she would be among those who would take up the mantle as part of a new generation of Irish playwrights for a theatre whose reputation had always rested on its writers. Her works were generally very well-received with some of them winning competitions, becoming headline performances, or being revived numerous times.Her plays were often quietly subversive, many being written just before or during the birth of the Republic of Ireland in 1937. Deevy had joined up as a member of the Cumann na mBan, an Irish women's Republican group and auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, in 1919, and her Republican, and even proto-feminist views can be clearly seen in plays such as Katie Roche and The King of Spain's Daughter. Adaptations of previous works such as Temporal Powers ,the prizewinning three-act play that was first performed at the Abbey Theatre on 12 September 1932 and directed by Lennox Robinson. Alongside her play Katie Roche, her fifth Abbey play which received its first production on 16 March 1936, as well as an adaptation, was of Anton Chekhov's "Polinka". These are plays where options for women are severely limited in society, where women are trapped by domestic life, or must choose between a loveless marriage or a life of drudgery in a factory. Deevy was often critical of the intensely Catholic society she lived in for its oppressive and repressive views on women. She was critical also of the Irish theatre scene and especially of literary censorship, questioning the roles, rights, and power of the censor, and also how to remove them. After a number of plays staged in the Abbey, her relationship with the theatre soured over the rejection of her play, Wife to James Whelan in 1937. She submitted another play, Holiday House in 1939 which was accepted but never staged, and any attempt by Deevy to find out why was met, in her words, “with evasive replies.” There are unpublished early playscripts by Irish writer such as Practice and Precept which is a three-act play when she resided with her sister, Josie, during the period 1914-19. A manuscript copy of this play survives amongst her Estate Papers at "Land scape", Passage Road, in Waterford. There is also "Let Us Live", a three-act play written by Deevy during her years in London. A manuscript copy is contained in her Estate Papers. "The Firstborn", which is a one-act play also written during her years in London. Finally, "Reserved Ground", which is a one-act play that was submitted to and rejected by the Abbey Theatre, in 1925. Alongside, "After To-morrow", a two-act play submitted to and also rejected once again by the Abbey Theatre in 1925, due to its brevity.

Work on Radio and TV[edit]
After Deevy stopped writing plays for the Abbey, she mainly concentrated on radio, a remarkable feat considering she had already become deaf before radio had become a popular medium in Ireland in the mid-to-late 1920s. Deevy had a prolific output for twenty years on Raidio Éireann and on the BBC. Two of her plays: The King of Spain's Daughter, broadcasted on 25 February 1939, and In Search of Valour, broadcasted on 28 June 1939, were eventually broadcasted on television by the BBC while they have also enjoyed several stage-revivals since her death, most recently by the Mint Theatre Company in New York.

Later life and death[edit]
Deevy was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters in 1954. Her sister, Nell, with whom she had lived in Dublin, died in the same year, so Deevy returned to Waterford. She became a familiar figure in Waterford city as she cycled around the city on her "High Nelly" bike. When her health began to fail she was eventually admitted to the Maypark Nursing Home in Waterford city and died there in 1963, aged 68, two days before her birthday. There is also some articles dedicated to Deevy post her death such as : The Journal of Irish Literature 14.2 (1985): 3-75 by  Robert Hogan, George Henderson and Kathleen Danaher as well as  the Irish University Review by Christopher Murray.