Irish Theatre: A Designer’s Theatre

The authors here attempt to underpin the logic followed in their construction of a landscape of contemporary Irish theatre. Acknowledging how they built on the feminist counter-canonical interventions of the last 20 years the authors tease out how this publication is for them a feminist text. They know the book cannot be read exclusively as a feminist text, or as one type of feminist text but feel as a cisgender female and male writing team it is important politically, pedagogically and methodologically to claim the subtle refrain of the feminist text that guided the criteria for inclusion and discussion in terms of overall balance of representation across theatre case studies. They end by inviting readers to take this project forward to its next iteration.

Conclusion

McIvor,

Walsh

2024

Rapid Change, Revision and the “Troubles” (1966–1980)

McIvor,

Walsh

2024

The late 1960s and 1970s saw Ireland’s acceptance into the European Economic Community in 1973, educational reform, revisionist histories, increased urbanisation and the outbreak of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, all of which prompted a break with previous convictions and ideologies. This chapter shows how theatrical activity reflected this change in its themes and practices with a new generation of directors and designers. An emphasis on regionalism led to the establishment of the Irish Touring Company and the founding of Druid in Galway. There were political experimentations in form, dramas critical of Catholic morality and plays that confronted the violence in the North. The Abbey produced seminal Beckett revivals, while productions at the Project Arts Centre brought the underrepresented urban working class to the fore.

Body

McIvor,

Walsh

2024

This chapter explores how bodies work and signify as individuals but also as stand-ins for a greater whole (both materially and representationally) within the contemporary Irish theatre and by extension, Irish society. The participation and presence of bodies in theatrical and extra-theatrical events connected to the contemporary Irish theatre as a network of individuals, practices and institutions indexes not only the aesthetic but the political and social status of the body within Irish society at any given time. Understanding the limits of theatrical representation and participation by individuals and/or communities as artists in the Irish theatre gives us deeper insight into the rights accorded to individual bodies and/or those grouped according to a shared identity such as gender, sexuality, religion, class, race/ethnicity and/or disability, as well as drawing attention to how theatre and performance as live and embodied art forms can sometimes push productively at the limits of what is legally or socially possible at the scale of the body. This chapter proposes the following frameworks for studying the body as a key vehicle towards utopian performatives in contemporary Irish theatre: Acting Bodies (Olwen Fouréré), Bodies as Tools (Panti Bliss/Rory O’Neill and the “Noble Call”), Intersectional Bodies (Christian O’Reilly’s Sanctuary with Blue Teapot Theatre and No Magic Pill).