Mark O’Rowe is one of the new generation of Irish playwrights to emerge in the 1990s who challenged their drama’s traditional concern with rural life by focusing on urban stories, usually characterised by high-octane language and a surreal and violent sensibility. Their experience of growing up in a society that developed from being “the niggers of Europe”, to quote from Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments (1987), to what has been termed the “Celtic Tiger” strongly informs their work. The social and cultural instabilities and insecurities that have accompanied Ireland’s rapid economic transformation in the 1990s provide a rich reservoir of topics and themes for these playwrights to critically evaluate and assess what it means to be Ir

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First published 08 February 2005

Citation: Schreiber, Mark. "Mark O'Rowe". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 February 2005.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5502, accessed 9 February 2010.]