Irish Theatre in the 21st Century

Irish University Review, 2020

This essay draws upon the work of Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, and Germaine Greer to consider the #MeToo movement and its reflection in the work of the author's students and the scandal at Dublin's Gate Theatre. Taking competing conceptions of freedom as they are materialised in this activism as it starting point, the essay questions intergenerational feminist ideas about the nature of freedom and its relationship to fear and to harassment. The essay returns to the feminist principle that ‘the personal is the political’ to reflect on women's lived experiences of threat and harassment, and young women's resistance to their objectification.

2019

This dissertation seeks to examine and deconstruct contemporary rape culture. It explores, and builds on, the three preceding waves of the feminist movement, and contextualises established theories of hegemonic masculinity. It defines and explores what a 'rape culture' is in present times, and discusses how this culture has grown to infiltrate many aspects of society today. The thesis argues that we are currently in the fourth wave of the feminist movement, and it uses the lens of fourth wave feminist theory to interrogate the performance of contemporary rape culture. The thesis explores four main types of performance in a bid to highlight the ways in which this rape culture impacts on society as a whole. The first chapter looks at the performativity of language for women affected by sexual violence; focusing especially on the use of the words 'victim' or 'survivor' when describing a woman who has experienced such violence. It explores the performance and per...

Contemporary Theatre Review, 2018

Performance Research, 2019

[Please download from official link here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13528165.2019.1718444] This article argues that the main effect of revelations of sexual harassment prompted by the #MeToo movement, the resulting changes in workplace policy, and heightened sensitivities around gender representation on stage has been to reconfigure the assemblage of mainstream theatre. The analysis is pursued across three distinct case studies from Australia: watching a production of Arthur Miller‘s canonical mid-century play 'A View from the Bridge'; rehearsing Sarah Kane‘s notoriously violent 'Blasted'; and reading the publicly available documents relating to a defamation case successfully brought by Australian actor Geoffrey Rush over tabloid allegations of sexual misconduct during a production of Shakespeare‘s 'King Lear'. The article demonstrates that new connections between different aspects of the theatrical process and its place in the wider society have come to prominence, and are influencing working practices, creative processes and public attitudes.

Review by Elizabeth Mannion

A review of Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland, by Brian Singleton for Theatre Journal.

ABEI Journal, 2023

This essay seeks to weave together an analysis of women's citizenship and its dependency on certain silences, and the exploration of this tension in two recent productions by Belfast-based Kabosh Theatre Company. Kabosh, and company Artistic Director Paula McFetridge, stage work that examines the realities of the region in the post-conflict era. In constructing the theoretical frame for the analysis, the concept of "silence" and "silencing" draws from Kristie Dotson (2015), and from work on violence such as Gayatri Spivak's concept of "epistemic violence" and a wide range of sources on the performance of violence in theatre. Chantal Mouffe's concept of agonistic democracy shapes the discussion of the Northern Irish state, and Wendy Brown and Joane Butler are the key scholars for the consideration of citizenship and nation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF) is an annual celebration of Irish and world theatre, usually taking place in the autumn. Since it was established in 1957, it has become one of Ireland’s most important cultural events. At the beginning of Willie White’s tenure as artistic director in 2011, DTF commissioned the essay collection that would become “That Was Us”: Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. Conscious of the variations in arts practice that followed Ireland’s economic downturn, White wanted to ensure that the changing character of Irish theatre would be documented and analysed. Editor Fintan Walsh, in his insightful introduction, situates contemporary Irish theatre practice connected to DTF in the climate of political, social, and economic upheaval in Ireland from 2007 to 2013 – the main timeframe of the book. “That Was Us” is divided into five sections: (1) “Theatres of Testimony”; (2) “Auto/Biographical Performance”; (3) “Bodies out of Bounds”; (4) “Placing Performance”; and (5) “Touring Performances.” Each subdivision comprises two or three critical essays, followed by a practitioner’s reflections on her/his work. The book makes its most important intervention in its engagement with forms that “don’t depend upon written play texts or the production of illusion, but rather make performances about real people, places, and events” (5). Companies employing different combinations of co-created, improvised, physical, documentary, site-responsive, and participatory practices have recently risen to prominence in Ireland. The proliferation of practices that privilege performance making over pre-existing scripts (many of which have a longer – though relatively marginalized – history in Ireland) has made the issue of documenting performance all the more pressing. Brokentalkers is one such path-breaking company whose work receives timely discussion in “That Was Us.” Under the artistic direction of Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan, Brokentalkers devises original performances with a range of collaborators, offering varying blends of music, song, dance, documentary theatre, and autobiographical performance. In doing so, the company tackles a range of challenging subjects, including the experience of grief shared by Cannon and his mother after a family tragedy, in Have I No Mouth (2012); abuse in Catholic care institutions, incorporating survivors’ testimonies, in The Blue Boy (2011); and the personal stories of older gay men, interviewed by singer/songwriter Seán Millar, in Silver Stars (2008). Charlotte McIvor’s rigorous analysis of Brokentalkers’ work appears in the first section of “That Was Us,” serving to hone and develop issues raised in Walsh’s introduction. She closely reads Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy, and Silver Stars, to illuminate the relationship between “theatrical form and contemporary Irish social fragmentation” (37). Locating these important works within Carol Martin’s concept of the “theatre of the real,” McIvor powerfully concludes that such theatre “must constantly push at its own limits to reach further, to expand the collective that can be invited in and represented through Irish theatre, whether as performance collaborators, givers of testimony, or members of the audience” (55). Brokentalkers reappears in the concluding chapters of the book. In the penultimate contribution, theatre critic Peter Crawley surveys a range of Irish works that have toured internationally, often with DTF as their point of departure. Crawley considers how various contextual factors and each production’s stylistic features might influence its international success. Discussing works by such companies as Rough Magic, Pan Pan, THEATREclub, and Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, as well as Brokentalkers, Crawley raises questions about what defines a production as Irish, in the context of increasing cultural globalization. Brokentalkers’ co-director, Gary Keegan, meditates further on this issue in his thought-provoking reflection, which concludes the volume. Keegan maintains that, although Brokentalkers is “concerned with telling Irish stories,” various encounters with work from outside of Ireland have inspired the company “to tell these stories in a way that international audiences recognise” (232). ANU Productions is another company that receives extended consideration in the volume. ANU has garnered national critical and scholarly acclaim in recent years for its immersive, site-specific work within the “Monto,” Dublin’s one-time red light district. Brian Singleton’s essay, contextualized with long international histories and recent theories of site-specific theatre, moves toward a strikingly personal record of how he...

2000

This thesis examines the strategy of re-visioning myth within contemporary European feminist theatre, a strategy which has proved popular over time and across cultures but which has received insufficient critical attention. This study seeks to fill that gap by offering a framework through which this practice can be considered, exploring the diverse motivations of individual playwrights, and evaluating the achievements of particular plays in context. Twelve case studies are included, grouped together to demonstrate a variety of approaches to re-visioning ranging from utilisation of myth as pretext for examination of social issues, to an apparent abandonment of contemporary reality for a utopian otherworld. However, it is argued first that mythical, social and psychological strands remain intertwined, and second that the diversity of approaches reflects the importance for feminist theatre of selecting strategies to meet specific needs, and that these strategies can thus be viewed as c...