Dr Finian O’Gorman is a lecturer and Head of Undergraduate Studies in Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Galway. He was previously an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin (2023) and an IRC Postgraduate Scholar at the University of Galway. His published work has featured in Irish University Review (2024), Review of Irish Studies in Europe (2021), Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950 (Bloomsbury, 2019), The Theatre of Enda Walsh (Carysfort, 2015), the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (2015), New Hibernia Review (2013), and Irish Theatre Magazine (2013). Dr O’Gorman is currently working on a book on the amateur theatre movement in Ireland, and he is the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Support Officer for the Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR).

Is the amateur theatre movement the true national theatre of Ireland? While the Abbey Theatre has been enshrined as Ireland's national theatre through what Loren Kruger terms the "founding discourses" of theatrical nationhood, this paper argues that such historiographical frameworks have obscured the role of a wide-reaching and highly impactful amateur theatre network. By 1954, approximately 12,000 members in 800 amateur drama societies were producing work viewed by 300,000-400,000 people annually across Ireland - a figure that would require two full years of nightly sold-out performances at the Abbey to match.

Drawing on archival evidence and employing Kruger's concept of national theatre as a "site of struggle," this study examines how the amateur movement's scale, geographical reach, and cultural and social impact challenges conventional historiographical approaches to national theatre. The paper argues that current methodological frameworks, which emphasize monumentality and centralized institutions, have led theatre historians to overlook how amateur theatre served as a vital platform for cultural exchange and nation-building in post-partition Ireland.  

This research contributes to broader historiographical debates about how theatre histories legitimize certain practices while delegitimizing others, particularly in post-colonial contexts where questions of cultural representation and national identity remain contested. It asks us to reconsider not just what constitutes a national theatre, but how theatre historians document and validate different forms of theatrical activity.