The Theatre of Tom Mac Intyre: Strays From the Ether

The title of this book, 'Strays from the ether', is taken from Tom Mac Intyre's most recent play, Only an Apple (Peacock Theatre, April 2009). From the early 1970s to the present day, Tom Mac Intyre's theatre has strayed from the ether of an anaesthetizing form of realism. His plays are strays, wandering in the margins of the dominant discourse, troublesome, hard to capture, to define or to pin down. Ether is considered the fifth and highest element after air, earth, fire and water - and each of these elements is invoked by Mac Intyre, as he works in the realm of the earthy, the fiery, but also beyond the worldly to the supernatural.

This long overdue anthology captures the soul of Mac Intyre's dramatic canon - its ethereal qualities, its extraordinary diversity, its emphasis on the poetic and on performance - in an extensive range of visual, journalistic and scholarly contributions from writers, theatre practitioners and photographers.