This comprehensive handbook assembles a comprehensive body of essays on the key elements of Irish Theatre and Performance from the past 50 years. In an attempt to examine key moments, movements, works, artists, companies, and spaces, essays in the text approach this important area of study from a range of thematic angles to create an analytical resource that seeks critical insight and steps beyond encyclopaedic listing. This important and timely scholarly resource offers a unique insight for upper-level students and scholars of theatre and performance, and helps evaluate the tremendous impact of Irish drama on the contemporary theatre scene. This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections - Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections - it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.