Abstrakt
If Stewart Parker's theatre plays are well known and have been the subject of considerable critical attention, the same cannot be said of the writer's work for television. Yet Parker worked repeatedly in radio and television from the late-1970s until his death.
Between 1977 and 1987 eight of his plays were broadcast on British television. Drawing on Parker's 1986 lecture 'Dramatis Personae', this paper considers the ways he explored the genre of the television drama, his playful attitudes to popular culture and how these works provide him with another platform for the depiction of Northern Irish life at the height of the Troubles.
I propose that a full appraisal of Parker's work must take his television drama seriously as an artistic parallel to his theatre plays. The paper concludes with discussion of three of Parker's plays for television: I'm A Dreamer Montreal; Iris in the Traffic, Ruby in the Rain and Lost Belongings.