The Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough & the Stars by Seán O’Casey
The Plough and the Stars and The Shadow of a Gunman are two plays by Seán O’Casey. The Plough and the Stars is set during the 1916 Easter Rising and sought to demonstrate how ordinary people experienced the rebellion. The Shadow of a Gunman was set just a few years later in 1920 during the Irish War of Independence. The play centres around an individual who was wrongly perceived as a member of the IRA. Whilst The Shadow of a Gunman is set a few years after the events of The Plough and the Stars, it was actually the first of the two to be written, in 1923. It interesting that O’Casey created a fictional work about what was a recent event at the time and subsequently worked back in time to write The Plough and the Stars in 1926, a decade after the Easter Rising. Both plays premiered at the Abbey Theatre, which allowed these fictional works to blend into the historical landscapes that they address.
The curtains on Brendan Foreman’s poster for The Shadow of a Gunman are arguably the most effective part of the poster, communicating an element of mystery and uncertainty. This fits into the theme of the play, which is about a case of mistaken identity, but also speaks to the broader theme of the War of Independence. The War of Independence revolved around the IRA’s resistance to British rule in Ireland via the use of guerilla tactics. A major aspect of the IRA’s tactics was the concealment of their identities by wearing ordinary clothing, for example. Therefore, the uncertainty that the artwork of the poster creates is quite fitting. The bold orange and red colours used on Foreman’s poster for The Plough and the Stars might help convey that the Easter Rising was a monumental event. In addition, the poster showcases many anonymous figures. This helps to showcase that the play was to be about the ordinary people of Dublin. This is further emphasised by the tenement house that is the focal point of the poster. Tenement houses tended to house multiple families in less than ideal conditions in working class areas of Dublin. The artwork on these posters was able to unite both the history of the period and O’Casey’s focus.
The Shadow of a Gunman poster is from a 1980 production of the play, and The Plough and the Stars from one in 1984. The posters may hint how the Abbey Theatre was interpreting these historical events that relate deeply to Dublin, where the theatre is located. From the posters, these productions may well have been encouraging audiences to challenge their perceptions of these historical events to consider the ordinary individual. As discussed in the other poster analyses, this can also be interesting to consider in terms of the conflict in Northern Ireland that was ongoing at the time, perhaps showing that those in Dublin were able to look at the effects of violence on the individual in a way that distance from conflict has made possible.
By Niamh O’Donnell, researched and written for #OpentheArchives, 2025.
