The Failure of Representation in Jack B. Yeats's the Green Wave and in Sand (Critical Essay‪)‬

Despite writing eight full-length plays, Jack B. Yeats, one of Ireland's best-known artists is rarely acknowledged as a dramatist. Celebrated by critics when first performed, the plays are now seldom produced and receive little academic attention. In those articles that have addressed the dramatic works the focus is not on their own merits, instead, the emphasis is placed on how they aid the interpretation of other works including Jack Yeats's own paintings, (1) his brother's poetry, (2) and his friend Samuel Beckett's oeuvre. (3) Nor have the plays been analyzed in relation to the canonical tradition of Irish drama. It is the purpose of this article to consider Yeats's last play In Sand (1949) and its companion prefatory piece, The Green Wave, in such a context. In particular, I want to explore how Yeats's experimental dramaturgy in its movement away from mimetic representation resists the homogenizing tendencies of nationalist artistic endeavour as pursued by Irish drama from the foundation of the Irish Literary theatre and the subsequent National Theatre Society onwards. The issue of representation was catalytic in the foundation of the literary theatre. Lady Gregory's often quoted letter to potential financial backers for the theatre states: