{"id":237,"date":"2017-10-16T18:57:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T18:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/?p=237"},"modified":"2023-03-19T10:44:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T10:44:50","slug":"from-rising-to-riot-irish-theatres-retrofuture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/from-rising-to-riot-irish-theatres-retrofuture\/","title":{"rendered":"From Rising to Riot: Irish Theatre\u2019s Retrofuture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian Singleton*<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The past year in Irish theatre has been highly significant politically. 2016 marked the centennial anniversary of the failed Rebellion against colonial British rule that has troubled the Irish nation since independence. The Rising, as it is termed colloquially, falling short of a revolution, was poorly timed, organized, sustained and doomed to failure. Nevertheless, its aspiration for a society of equality in its official Proclamation of an independent republic has long since captured the imagination of Irish citizens. Nevertheless, the various iterations of the political state, in which citizens have lived since, have failed spectacularly to live up to those aspirations, characterized not least by the State\u2019s 2010 EU-IMF bailout and subsequent cuts in public services, whole-scale unemployment and increased emigration. But, in the decade leading up to the 2016 centenary year, new voices and companies had emerged in Irish theatre that contested history and state remembering, as well as challenged Ireland\u2019s willingness to endorse contemporary western neoliberal politics and economics. Those companies and their practitioners would set the agenda for remembering Ireland\u2019s political past and its hoped-for future into 2017.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Emma O\u2019Kane in ANU Productions and CoisC\u00e9im Dance Theatre\u2019s production of These Rooms<\/em>, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2016.
Photo by Patrick Redmond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the independent theatre sector garnered the majority of the headlines for its innovative, popular and cultural triumphs of political critique, the two major and best-funded theatres in Ireland, Dublin\u2019s the Abbey (national theatre) and the Gate, underwent significant changes in leadership and new directions in programming in 2016-17. These changes were symptomatic of a very fundamental shift in the Irish theatre sector, prompted by wide political movements for equality in gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and class. Former Abbey Theatre director, Fiach MacConghail, had fallen victim to gender blindness in November 2015, when he announced the 2016 centenary programme \u201cWaking the Nation\u201d that almost exclusively programmed male writers. His social media defense sparked outrage in the sector and beyond, and led directly to the setting up of the #WakingTheFeminists campaign.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Though MacConghail hosted the first public meeting of the campaign in the Abbey,[2]<\/sup><\/a> it marked the beginning of the end his almost twelve-year tenure at the helm of the national theatre, leaving before the end of 2016. Similarly, Michael Colgan, director of the Gate Theatre for an even longer period of thirty-three years, ended his controversial contract, with his very high publicly funded salary having been a source of recurrent journalistic interest.[3]<\/sup><\/a> The two major theatre-producing houses of Dublin, with new directors at the helm, began to reassess their respective remits, and to engage more widely and profoundly with the increasingly important independent theatre sector.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Tadgh Murphy and Mikel Murfi in Landmark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival\u2019s production of Ballyturk<\/em>,
by Enda Walsh at Abbey Theatre 2017. Photo by Patrick Redmond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former directors of the National Theatre of Scotland, Neil Murray and Graham McLaren, launched their first programme at the helm of the Abbey Theatre, entitled \u201cWhat happens next is this . . . ,\u201d with a retrospective season. From February to May 2017, the Abbey hosted the greatest hits of the independent sector, productions that had gained critical success and international recognition in the past but not on the stages of the National Theatre.[4]<\/sup><\/a> These productions signaled a new direction for the Abbey, a move towards inclusion, collaboration and a greater geographical spread. Two plays by Enda Walsh (Arlington<\/em> and Ballyturk<\/em>),<\/strong> co-produced by Landmark Productions and the Galway International Arts Festival, heralded the new beginning and brought attention to the fact that a major writer of international standing, Enda Walsh, had never had a play produced by his own national theatre.<\/p>\n

The season also included a revival of the much loved and praised Dublin by Lamplight<\/em>, written by Michael West and directed by Annie Ryan, under the auspices of their company, The Corn Exchange. The play is a fictional account of the struggle to create a national theatre against a backdrop of nationalist insurrection and catholic morality, and is performed in the company\u2019s signature style of improvisation and story theatre in a commedia<\/em> style. Produced originally to coincide with the Abbey Theatre\u2019s centenary in 2004, though notably never performed there until 2017, the play found new resonance, particularly in the subplot of costume assistant turned actor, Maggie, whose stage glory was ultimately marred by the disappearance of her insurgent boyfriend, leaving her pregnant in an Ireland without legal abortion provision and her presumed fate in one the notorious Magdalen laundries. The current Repeal the Eighth campaign to annul the 1983 amendment to the constitution that outlaws abortion provided a new wider political acuteness to this plotline, taking the play in a tragic turn in an otherwise anarchically hilarious spoof on theatre and nation.[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Caitr\u00edona Ennis (Maggie) in The Corn Exchange\u2019s Dublin by Lamplight<\/em> by Michael West in collaboration with the company,
at the Abbey Theatre, 2017. Photo by Ros Kavanagh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Further productions reclaimed by the season included Rough Magic Theatre Company\u2019s 2016 musical The Train<\/em>, a fictionalized account of the forty-seven women of the Irish Women\u2019s Liberation Movement who took the train across the border from Dublin to Belfast in 1971 to purchase contraceptives in a direct challenge to the then restrictive laws of the Republic. The musical, written by Arthur Riordan and Bill Whelan, and directed by Lynne Parker, provided a historical resonance for the current WakingTheFeminists political interventions.<\/p>\n

The season further extended its socio-political considerations with a trilogy of one-man plays by actor-author Pat Kinevane, in co-production with Fishamble: The New Play Company, featuring acutely political themes of homelessness (Silent<\/em>), ageing (Forgotten<\/em>) and bullying (Underneath<\/em>), in the light of many scandals that had emerged in the media about the extent of homelessness, despite the reported economic recovery, as well as multiple reports of abuse in care homes driven by profit margins.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Pat Kinevane in Fishamble\u2019s production of Forgotten<\/em> by Pat Kinevane at Abbey Theatre, 2017. Photo by Patrick Redmond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps, one of the most significant co-productions of the Abbey\u2019s 2017 season was with the Tony award-winning Druid theatre company from Galway, who brought their acclaimed 2016 production of Samuel Beckett\u2019s Waiting for Godot<\/em> to the main stage of the Abbey.[6]<\/sup><\/a> While the play and production had none of the socio-political relevance and resonance of co-productions previously mentioned, the significance of the Abbey partnering with Druid (the biggest and most internationally acclaimed companies in the independent sector) clearly signaled how the Abbey, Ireland\u2019s national theatre, could not claim national significance on its own, and that artistic cultural success was not to be found in the capital city alone. Druid\u2019s production of Beckett\u2019s most iconic play was directed by Garry Hynes as physicalized storytelling, with constantly shifting imagery as in a live-art installation, aided by the intimacy of the choreography (by David Bolger) lending a humanity to the fraternity of humans in an otherwise brutalized world. It was described by Peter Crawley, chief critic of the Irish Times<\/em>, as the best production of the play in twenty-five years.[7]<\/sup><\/a> It is little wonder the production will tour nationally and internationally in 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Marty Rea as Vladimir and Aaron Monaghan as Estragon in Druid Theatre production\u2019s Waiting for Godot<\/em> by Samuel Beckett
at Abbey Theatre, 2017. Photo by Patrick Redmond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Gate Theatre\u2019s first programme of 2017, under the directorship of newly appointed Selina Cartmell,[8]<\/sup><\/a> opened in July with The Great Gatsby<\/em>, adapted from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and directed by Alexander Wright. The production turned the entire theatre, both inside and out, into Jay Gatsby\u2019s jazz-age mansion, and audiences were invited, not to the play, but to his party, and encouraged to dress up in 1920s\u2019 costume. The entire theatre building was stripped of its historical photographs and artifacts, and audiences entered an immersive experience in an auditorium converted into a ballroom that acted as a portal to the subplots in off-ballroom spaces. In some respects, it signaled to the much younger middle classes that this was their theatre now, as there were no seats to facilitate a past sedentary generation. And, as the production licensed drinking during the performance, audiences were sucked into the jazz-age excesses of the novel\u2019s world in which they were immersed, ironically participating in a capitalism that the performance critiqued. While the Gate Theatre was renewing its middle class in audience terms, it was making a major political point in the very doing of it.[9]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Marty Rea and cast dancing in the Gatsby mansion in The Gate Theatre\u2019s production of F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s novel,
The Great Gatsby<\/em>, adapted and directed by Alexander Wright, 2017. Photo by Agata Stoinska<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The representation of the state of the nation, past and present, throughout 2016 was championed theatrically by ANU Productions, led by director Louise Lowe and visual artist Owen Boss. The final (of three full-scale and five satellite) productions, These Rooms<\/em>, played during and after the Dublin Theatre Festival.<\/p>\n

A co-production with CoisC\u00e9im Dance Theatre, These Rooms<\/em>[10]<\/sup><\/a> was set in Sean O\u2019Casey\u2019s birthplace, 84-86 Dorset Street in Dublin 1, not far from the now derelict site of the North King Street massacre of civilians by the British army during the Rising. Audiences time-travelled to the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising, to a pub where locals were waiting for a band from the North that would never appear, as the border had been closed to protect the state commemorations, while archival footage played on a television set of the state ceremony, an exclusively military and male event. Thus followed a breakdown of the performance, as audiences were invited to follow the women behind the scenes and back in time to hear and see how the events of 1916 affected them directly. The production combined \u201ceye witness testimonies from 38 female voices with newly released findings of the government inquiry which followed and investigates questions of dignity and cultural trauma, belonging and dispossession.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> These testimonies of trauma from the past were performed in a series of art installations, in often unspoken movement sequences, as suppressed testimonies that sought expression through performance.<\/p>\n

The production lived on into 2017 with a follow-up film installation, in response to both the theatre production and the issues of the past it represented. In a specially constructed structure inside the Temple Bar Gallery, three short films, under the collective title of Falling Out of Standing<\/em>, by Owen Boss, David Bolger and Louise Lowe, aimed \u201cto contextualize how the past is propelled into the present and the impact of time on conflicted histories through the form of film.\u201d[12]<\/sup><\/a> A hundred years on, These Rooms<\/em> and its film installation sequel, Falling Out of Standing<\/em>, performed a \u201cretrofuture\u201d of our revolutionary past\u2019s desires for social justice as yet to be realized.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Justine Cooper in ANU Productions and CoisC\u00e9im Dance Theatre\u2019s production of These Rooms<\/em> as part of
Dublin Theatre Festival, 2016. Photo by Patrick Redmond<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Such an indictment of the failure of successive governments post-independence to live up to the ideals of the Proclamation of the Republic also inspired one of the most popular theatrical performances of the past year, THISISPOPBABY\u2019s RIOT<\/em>, that won Best Production of the 2016 Dublin Fringe Festival, was revived in the popular music venue Vicar Street in July 2017, and will tour to Sydney and New York in early 2018.[14]<\/sup><\/a> Irish Times<\/em> critic Peter Crawley rhetorically questioned the premise of the production: \u201cCan a great night out also count as a political act?\u201d[15]<\/sup><\/a> The answer by critics and spectators alike was \u201cyes,\u201d with multi-starred reviews and sell-out runs. The cabaret, directed by Phillip McMahon and Jennifer Jennings, featured lip-synching drag from Panti Bliss (whose performing career in clubs and theatres is matched by her political campaigning for social justice); the explosive performance poetry of Emmet Kirwan, who bounded on stage like a theatrical guerrilla, calling out the injustices that live on in the Irish state in the twenty-first century (while reminding the audience to check their privilege of being able to consume such culture in the first place); the highly erotic acrobatics of former GAA player Ronan Brady played against a Michael Harding monologue that deconstructed the masculinity on view; Dublin-based American singer-actress Megan Riordan, who camped up her own nation\u2019s masculine sporting culture to the point of emasculating it; together with TV sensations, Lords of Strut and the Up and Over It duo, both highly skilled in their respective arts (acrobatics and Irish dancing), contesting received notions of Irishness and offering momentary glimpses through their skill of utopian alternatives to austerity, conservatism and repression.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The cast of THISISPOPBABY’s RIOT<\/em>, created and directed by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon, first produced as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival 2016 and revived in Vicar Street Dublin in 2017. Photo by Conor Horgan and Niall Sweeney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Self-described as \u201cboth party and politic, a love letter of hope to the future, a clarion call on the state of the nation and a divine celebration and a blunt criticism of the world today,\u201d[16]<\/sup><\/a> RIOT<\/em> offered an alternative means to contest the past and imagine a future for Ireland in this decade of centenaries of nation building that spoke to many of the ideals of the 1916 revolutionaries, whose proclamations for justice are still a work in progress: our retrofuture.<\/p>\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n