Elizabeth Kuti’s Treehouses: Toward a New Definition of Irish Theatre

Does a dramatist have to be born in Ireland to be an “Irish” playwright? This article explores the idea that a dramatist can be “of Ireland” and write a distinctly “Irish” play without being born in Ireland. In our globalworld, the idea of nationality is increasingly fluid. The work of dramatistElizabeth Kuti exhibits the hybridity of some contemporary Irish plays. Kuti has a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin; she was married in Dublin, and one of her sons was born there. She has worked with several Irish theatre companies including the Abbey Theatre and Rough Magic Theatre Company, two of Dublin’s and Ireland’s most prestigious theatre companies. This article examines Kuti as an Irish dramastist , concentrating on her two plays with Irish locations. Treehouses is set in a Dublin nursing home. As a memory play, time and place shift from the Hungary of World War II, to the Dublin nursing home, to some place in England. The Sugar Wife, set in Dublin during the American Civil War, explores the lives of Quaker abolitionists. The play discusses the ethics of how money is made and used. Having lived in Ireland for eleven years, from 1993 to 2004, Kuti can certainly claim”insider” knowledge. Tellingly, she describes her situation: “I’m not Irish but I feel a part of Irish theatre.

Strong subadditivity and the covariant holographic entanglement entropy formula

Headrick and Takayanagi showed that the Ryu-Takayanagi holographic entanglement entropy formula generally obeys the strong subadditivity (SSA) inequality, a fundamental property of entropy. However, the Ryu-Takayanagi formula only applies when the bulk spacetime is static. It is not known whether the covariant generalization proposed by Hubeny, Rangamani, and Takayanagi (HRT) also obeys SSA. We investigate this question in three-dimensional AdS-Vaidya spacetimes, finding that SSA is obeyed as long as the bulk spacetime satisfies the null energy condition. This provides strong support for the validity of the HRT formula.Comment: 38 page