Stewart Parker
James Stewart Parker was a notable Northern Irish playwright whose works are marked by a deep engagement with societal and political themes, particularly in the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Born in East Belfast to a Protestant working-class family, Parker faced significant health challenges, including the amputation of a leg due to bone cancer while studying at Queen's University. He obtained his bachelor's degree in English and a master's in poetic drama, during which he also published a pamphlet chronicling his battle with cancer.
Parker viewed theater as a transformative medium capable of addressing and expressing repressed societal issues, aspiring to enact change without resorting to didacticism. His first play, "Spokesong," gained acclaim for its exploration of social themes, while his later work, "Northern Star," showcased his sophisticated narrative style and historical engagement. Both plays were significant successes, highlighting his impact on contemporary theater. Despite his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, Parker's legacy continues through revivals of his work, demonstrating the lasting resonance of his insights into the human experience and societal dynamics.
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Stewart Parker
Playwright
- Born: October 20, 1941
- Birthplace: East Belfast, Ireland
- Died: November 2, 1988
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Although James Stewart Parker lived through the troubles in North Ireland and despite daunting health problems, he always projected a positive attitude in his plays. Ill health dogged his days as a student at Queen’s University, Belfast, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in English in 1964 and a master’s degree in poetic drama in 1967. Early in his undergraduate studies, he suffered from a bone cancer that necessitated the amputation of a leg. In 1967, his pamphlet of poems, The Casualty’s Meditation, which chronicles his battle against cancer, was published.
The son of a tailor’s cutter, George Herbert, and Isabel Lynas Parker, Stewart was born in East Belfast. His working-class family was Protestant. As an adolescent, he had a definite sense of who he was, a self-assurance that made him stand out.
Upon his graduation from Queen’s University, Parker taught English at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. After receiving his master’s degree, he taught for two years at Cornell University, then returned in 1969 to Belfast, to devote himself to writing. He viewed theater as a potent force in society, one fraught with political implications in which ideas could be aired and repressed elements of the subconscious brought to the surface and examined. He believed theater could make a difference in society, considering it an agent of change. His aim, like Bertholt Brecht’s, was to implement change. Whereas Brecht sought to impose change in dogmatic, authoritarian ways, however, Parker scrupulously avoided didacticism.
Parker’s first play, Spokesong, with music by Jimmy Kennedy, focuses on the owner of a bicycle shop who advocates outlawing automobiles. The play, an extraordinary success when it played at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1975, was quickly taken to London and then to Broadway. It won the coveted Evening Standard award. Although Spokesong is often identified as Parker’s best play, Northern Star, is, in many ways, a more complex play in which the playwright juggles time elements in ways suggestive of noted expressionist playwrights.
Northern Star hones in on the last night of Henry Joy McCracken, a Protestant cotton merchant, a historical figure in the 1798 rebellion in Ireland. McCracken has been sentenced to death. An idealist who dreams of uniting Protestant and Catholic Ireland, McCracken only widened the divide between the two by polarizing representatives of the two camps. The play is presented in what Parker called “the continuous past.” In sequences reminiscent of William Shakespeare’s “the seven ages of man,” he introduces representatives of various stages of life, such historical characters as Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Dion Boucicault, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and John Millington Synge. The treatment of the complicated temporal sequences the play demands is masterful.
Parker’s cancer returned, resulting in his death at age forty-eight. Shortly after his death, memorial revivals of his Pentecost and Northern Star drew large, appreciative audiences.