Kate McCarthy is Lecturer in Drama at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, South East Technological University. Her public engagement takes many forms, including: theatre practice, workshops, drama and theatre education projects, educational resources, public talks, and podcasts, as well as publications and conference contributions. Recent publications include: Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy (co-edited with Úna Kealy, OBP, 2025); ‘Writing from the Margins: Re-framing Teresa Deevy’s Archive and her Correspondence with James Cheasty c.1952–1962’, Irish University Review 52.2 (with Úna Kealy, 2022); and 'Public performance and reclaiming space: Waterford’s Magdalene Laundry' in Haughton, M., McAuliffe, M., Pine, E., eds., Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries: commemoration, gender and the postcolonial carceral state (with Jennifer O’Mahoney and Jonathan Culleton, MUP, 2021). Kate is the Policy and Advocacy Elected Member of the Irish Society for Theatre Research (2023-2026).

This paper explores Mary Devenport O’Neill’s ballet-poem, Bluebeard (1933), and subsequent revivals by the Dublin Verse-Speaking Society in 1943 and 1948. Choreographed by Ninette de Valois and performed to an original score by John F. Larchet, O’Neill’s ballet-poem can be interpreted as a metaphor for coercive confinement in the early decades of the Irish Free State. In combining two of the time arts (Cage, 1939), namely poetry and dance, O’Neill creates an experimental art form through which the legacies of gendered violence can be explored. Through her collaborations with Austin Clarke, O’Neill continued to develop and platform her work. This entrepreneurial spirit is also evident in the endeavours of the women dancers, choreographers, teachers, and artistic directors of the time who established ballet companies, ballet clubs, and ballet schools after the closure of the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet in 1933. Building on previous feminist theatre historiographic research on Bluebeard (Fitzpatrick and Hill, 2022; Hill, 2019), this paper draws on textual analysis, archival material, and analysis of Larchet’s score to further examine O’Neill’s creative power and contribution to Ireland’s experimental and dance theatre landscape.