Introduction: Cultural Convergence at Dublin’s Gate Theatre

This essay proposes that stage design offers a means of establishing visual links to an aesthetically radical European modernism which was being explored by a post-Revolutionary generation of Irish artists and writers. Existing histories and critical studies of Irish theatre privilege literary approaches and consequently a rich seam of contextual visual material and information has been neglected. Given theatre's important cultural role in shaping questions of national identity, "A Note on What Happened" argues that the study of theatre as spectacle is crucial to an understanding of how contemporary Irish audiences were introduced to avant-garde ideas.

The work and founding philosophy of Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure, founded in 1976 in the wake of Franco’s death, has been very similar to that of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Both theatres are known as practitioners’ theatres; both have struggled to understand if an “alternative national theatre” is necessarily undermined by accepting a state subsidy; both were guided early on by a curious combination of upper-class individuals and left-wing radicals; both have benefitted from the central involvement of female, LGBT, and migrant theatremakers; both took Bertolt Brecht as a model at key points in their history; and both have used a combination of international plays and original, home-grown dramas to address changing political circumstances in the regions where they were based. An issue related to this last point is the main focus of this paper. The Irish language played a key role in the early Gate Theatre, and Catalan has been the language used at the Teatre Lliure since its founding. In this paper, we will demonstrate that the cosmopolitan/transnational character of both theatres was not undermined but actually strengthened by their use of the local language. Central to this argument will be a linking of the role of translations into the minority language at both theatres. Specifically, in addressing Catalan audiences with stories that might be relevant to them, the Teatre Lliure has always translated works from across Europe into Catalan – as opposed to focussing primarily on works written originally in Spanish. Similarly, the Irish-language productions at the Gate (whether they were mounted as part of the theatre’s Christmas and summer revues or by An Comhar Drámmíochta, the Irish-language company hosted in the Gate on Sunday nights between 1931 and 1938) came from a wide array of sources. For example, Gate co-founder Micheál macLíammóir directed plays for An Comhar Drámmíochta during those years which were originally written by Anton Chekhov, Sacha Guitry (the Russian-born French playwright), Gregorio Martinez Sierra, Molière, Leo Tolstoy, Eca de Gueiroz, the Quintero brothers, and the French writing teams of Labiche-Martin and Erkmann-Chatrian. It is clear that, even while working in minority languages, these two theatres were far from “parochial” and were indeed making strong links to the wider world.

2014

2017

Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre "Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre gathers together scholars and practitioners to give us a comprehensive picture of the state of Irish theatre. Providing fresh perspectives on playwrights like McDonagh, Walsh, and Marina Carr, and on the work of companies like Corcadorca and BrokenCrow (as well as interviews with key practitioners), this book is going to be a key part of the debates over performance in Ireland in the 21st Century.

Kritika Kultura, 2010

This essay proposes that stage design offers a means of establishing visual links to an aesthetically radical European modernism which was being explored by a post-Revolutionary generation of Irish artists and writers. Existing histories and critical studies of Irish theatre privilege literary approaches and consequently a rich seam of contextual visual material and information has been neglected. Given theatre’s important cultural role in shaping questions of national identity, “A Note on What Happened” argues that the study of theatre as spectacle is crucial to an understanding of how contemporary Irish audiences were introduced to avant-garde ideas.

This essay theorises a collage of theatrical, ideological and political moments reflecting notable shifts in thinking, theatre, and social practice pervading Celtic Tiger and post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Recent years have witnessed a radicalisation of theatre practices resulting in a greater focus and emphasis directed at the live receptive experience; the "audience"/"spectator"/"participant". At the same time, seismic changes in the socio-cultural and political sphere such as the digitalisation of society, a collapse of mass faith in organised religion, a faltering of established community values, the neoliberalism of state policies and work cultures, and the cynicism of an increasingly postmodern society and culture, are renegotiating the habits of everyday living practices and social experience. In performance, on stage and off, these shifts signal both a deconstruction and reinscription of the body, ideologically, politically and culturally. Hence, the objectives and scope of this essay; to review and examine this shifting cultural consciousness in contemporary Ireland, whereby engagement with (but not domination from) postmodern culture and society informs the making of contemporary theatre and performance, with increasing focus on the receptive experience as a political encounter.

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 2018

Among the infinite variety of borders crossed in the theatre – social, national, cultural, gender, generic, aesthetic, existential, and many others – this essay focuses on self-reflexive border-crossings in Irish kunstlerdrama (artist-drama) and theatre. Spanning over eighty years, in selected plays from W. B. Yeats’s The King of the Great Clock Tower (1934), through Brian Friel’s Faith Healer (1979), Frank McGuinness’s The Bird Sanctuary (1994) and Marie Jones’s Stones in His Pockets (1999), to Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk (2014), a few forms of theatrical representation of transgressing and/or dissolving boundaries are explored while attempting to delienate which borders need to be respected, which contested, abolished, and then which to be transcended. Artist figures or artworks within drama, embodying the power to move or mediate between different realms of reality, including art and nature, stage and auditorium, life and death, reveal that sacrificial death proves crucial still in a ...

2014

The limits of scenography – like the limits of performance – are being continually expanded so that it is no longer contained within the theatre but can refer to the performative environments beyond. In this context, Ireland of the 1950s can be seen to have undergone significant scenographic changes, in which visual culture was harnessed to improve Ireland’s performance on the international stage. This essay engages both established and emerging definitions of scenography. It explores how the pioneering work of the Pike theatre, Dublin, can be seen to endorse a ‘stage of re-vision’ within Irish theatre of the 1950s. However, I also examine the ways in which the Pike’s scenographic aesthetics interact complexly with the changing scenography of Ireland at large. In doing so, I aim to illuminate the ways in which Ireland’s increasingly image-conscious culture can be seen to impact on the visual and performative character of Irish theatre.

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...

Theatre History Studies, 2021