Performing Social Change on the Island of Ireland

From Republic to Pandemic

Ciara L. Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032076492
• eBook ISBN: 9781000866018
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the relationship between moments of significant social change on the island of Ireland and performance practice during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It examines how moments of significant change influence not only the content of performance practice but also the form and function of theatre production and reception.

This book investigates how the Troubles and subsequent Peace Process, Second-Wave Feminism, the Celtic Tiger and neoliberalism, social revolution, and the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the form and function of performance practice across the island of Ireland. Although these forms of theatre and performance making refer to varied and distinct lineages of practice internationally, there are key parallels that compel a study of their inter-relationality in a specific Irish context.

This book explores how the performance of Ireland illuminates histories and stories that are on the margins, illuminating the lived realities of everyday life through the presentation of moments of violence, oppression, and trauma as something that is as important as the larger narratives often ascribed to nationhood. This book asks how performance practice engages with and informs moments of major social change on the island of Ireland through the distinct yet intersecting lenses of place, performance form, and social context over the course of almost a century of Irish theatre and performance practice.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: States of Change
• 1 Storytelling and Performance Post-Good Friday Agreement
• 2 Tourism as Performance: Moving into a New Millennium
• 3 “A Bevy of Beauties”: Feminism, Double Jeopardy, and Charabanc Theatre Company
• 4 “Sojourned in Her Majesty's Prison”: The Performative Activism of Margaretta D'Arcy
• 5 Reclaiming Personal Histories Through Performance
• 6 A Dying Tiger: Performing Ireland's Housing Crisis
• 7 “Virtual Reroutings”: Performing Ireland's Social Revolution
• 8 “Survival Is Insufficient”: Ireland's Pandemic Performance
• Index