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Long Flame in the Hideous Gale: The Politics of Irish Popular Performance 1950–2000

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The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance

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Abstract

This chapter traces ideas of popular performance as a political art form across the last half of the twentieth century, through the lens of independent theatre and the community arts sectors in Ireland. The chapter fuses the two sectors temporarily as an “ideological hybrid” in order to connect ideas of popular theatre to the performance work of both—as “flashpoints” or key moments from the 1970s on to the turn of the century. The work interrogates those theatre and performance flashpoints as counter or alternative narratives to the dominant political and cultural coda of the time. The chapter concludes with a return to the discussion on the politics of popular theatre and to the cultural and political significance of the performance work produced through both sectors in recent Irish theatre history.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Peter Sheridan, “The Theatre and Politics,” in The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1977–1981, ed. M.P. Hederman et al. (Dublin: The Blackwater Press, 1982), 75.

  2. 2.

    Bernard Sharratt, “The politics of the popular?—From melodrama to television”, in Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, ed. David Bradby et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 275.

  3. 3.

    John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1989).

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 160.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., 160.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 160.

  7. 7.

    Anna McMullan and Trish McTighe, “Samuel Beckett, the Gate Theatre Dublin and the Contemporary Irish Independent Theatre Sector: Fragments of Performance History”, Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies (2014): 2, accessed March 1, 2017, https://breac.nd.edu/articles/samuel-beckett-the-gate-theatre-dublin-and-the-contemporary-irish-independent-theatre-sector-fragments-of-performance-history.

  8. 8.

    McMullan and McTighe, “Samuel Beckett”, 3.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Beckett’s play transferred to the Gate Theatre and subsequently toured the country into 1956, while The Quare Fellow was later produced at the Abbey and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in London. The Pike Theatre caused controversy when it staged the Irish premiere of Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo in 1957 as its contribution to the inaugural Dublin Theatre Festival. Simpson was prosecuted for obscenity for including a mimed representation of a condom on stage. The costly and tedious process of going through the Irish courts before Simpson was exonerated caused irrevocable damage to the Pike’s fortunes, which closed its doors in 1961.

  11. 11.

    O’Connor cited in Morash, “A History of Irish Theatre”, 217.

  12. 12.

    The centre became the home of independent theatre company Rough Magic in the 1980s. Loose Canon and Bedrock developed their craft there, along with Dagdha Dance Company, among others.

  13. 13.

    Declan Gorman, “Long Live the Fringe”, Irish Theatre Magazine 1:1 (1998): 3.

  14. 14.

    Fitzgerald, “The Beginnings of Community Arts”, 70.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 68.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 69.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 68–70.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 70, 77.

  19. 19.

    Paula Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality: A Review of the Position of Community Arts in State Cultural Policy in the Irish Republic” in An Outburst of Frankness, ed. Sandy Fitzgerald (Dublin, New Island, 2004), 106.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 85.

  21. 21.

    Brian Kennedy cited in Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality”, 86.

  22. 22.

    Ciarán Benson cited in Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality”, 90. The ACE Report was the result of a four-year action research project undertaken by the Arts Community Education Committee and funded by the Arts Council and the Gulbenkian Foundation. The project researched six Education and Community Arts Projects funded by ACE between 1985 and 1989. Indeed, CAFE, as the “representative body” for the Community Arts in Ireland, was partly funded by ACE.

  23. 23.

    Lar Cassidy cited in Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality”, 92.

  24. 24.

    Karen Fricker, “Travelling Without Moving: True Lines and Contemporary Irish Theatre Practice”, in Druids, Dudes and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre, ed. Dermot Bolger (Dublin: New Island, 2001), 117.

  25. 25.

    Gorman, “Long Live the Fringe”, 3.

  26. 26.

    Jenny Harris cited in Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality”, 108.

  27. 27.

    Mic Moroney, “The Twisted Mirror: Landscapes, Mindscapes, Politics and Language on the Irish Stage”, in Druids, Dudes and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre, ed. Dermot Bolger (Dublin: New Island, 2001), 264.

  28. 28.

    Fitzgerald, “The Beginnings of Community Arts”, 72.

  29. 29.

    The ‘Monto’ was a famous red-light district in Dublin. The collective was also involved in the North Star Conferences of 1983/84, which led to the formation of CAFE, as discussed earlier.

  30. 30.

    Fintan O’Toole cited in Morash, “A History of Irish Theatre”, 262.

  31. 31.

    Jim Culleton, “Paul Mercier in Conversation with Jim Culleton”, in Theatre Talk: Voices of Irish Theatre Practitioners, ed. Lillian Chambers et al. (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2001), 336.

  32. 32.

    Joseph Long, “Come Dance with Me in Ireland: Current Developments in the Independent Theatre Sector”, in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, ed. Eamonn Jordan (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2000), 90.

  33. 33.

    The work produced with the company also helped to launch the careers of both Roddy Doyle and Brendan Gleeson; both were teachers at the same school as Mercier, Greendale Community School in Kilbarrack, North Dublin.

  34. 34.

    Lauren Onkey, “The Passion Machine Theatre Company’s Everyday Life”, in A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage, ed. Stephen Watt et al. (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000), 225.

  35. 35.

    Redmond O’Hanlon, “In Conversation with Redmond O’Hanlon”, in Critical Moments: Fintan O’Toole on Modern Irish Theatre, ed. Julia Furay and Redmond O’Hanlon (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2003), 336.

  36. 36.

    Critical Moments: Fintan O’Toole on Modern Irish Theatre, 45.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 54.

  38. 38.

    Victor Merriman, Because We Are Poor: Irish Theatre in the 1990s (Dublin: Carysfort, 2011), 12.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 156.

  40. 40.

    Ibid.

  41. 41.

    Merriman , Because We Are Poor, 157–160; Martine Pelletier, “Dermot Bolger’s Drama”, in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, ed. Eamonn Jordan (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2000), 250.

  42. 42.

    Merriman , Because We Are Poor, 166–68.

  43. 43.

    Nowlan in Merriman , Because We Are Poor, 167.

  44. 44.

    Critical Moments: Fintan O’Toole on Modern Irish Theatre, 323–4.

  45. 45.

    Merriman , Because We Are Poor, 167.

  46. 46.

    Gerry Colgan, “Rosie and Starwars”, Irish Times, February 28, 1997, accessed March 1, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/rosie-and-starwars-html.

  47. 47.

    For full review, see Irish Times, September 25, 1998, accessed March 3, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/farawayan-html.

  48. 48.

    Paula Meehan, “The Apprentice”, in Return and No Blame (Dublin: Beaver Row Press, 1984), 27.

  49. 49.

    Caroline Williams, Katie Hayes, Siân Quill and Clare Dowling, “People in Glasshouse: An Anecdotal History of an Independent Theatre Company”, in Druids, Dudes and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre, ed. Dermot Bolger (Dublin: New Island, 2001), 132.

  50. 50.

    Williams et al, “People in Glasshouse”, 135.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 135–37.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 137.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 140.

  54. 54.

    Cathy Leeney, “I Know My Own Heart; Ladies and Gentlemen”, in The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights, ed. Martin Middeke and Peter Paul Schnierer (London: Methuen, 2010), 77.

  55. 55.

    Williams et al, “People in Glasshouse”, 145–6.

  56. 56.

    Charlotte McIvor, “Albert Nobbs, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Quare Irish Female Erotohistories”, Irish University Review, 43 (2013): 1.

  57. 57.

    Luke Clancy, “Ladies and Gentlemen”, Irish Times, April 19, 1996, accessed February 20, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/ladies-and-gentlement-html.

  58. 58.

    Sunday Tribune, April 1996, accessed February 20, 2017.

  59. 59.

    Charlotte McIvor, “Albert Nobbs, Ladies and Gentlemen”, 5–6.

  60. 60.

    Anna McMullan, “Unhomely Stages: Women Taking (a) Place in Irish Theatre”, in Dudes and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre, ed. Dermot Bolger (Dublin: New Island, 2001), 83.

  61. 61.

    Paula Meehan in McMullan “Unhomely Stages”, 83.

  62. 62.

    Critical Moments: Fintan O’Toole on Modern Irish Theatre, 177–8.

  63. 63.

    McMullan “Unhomely Stages”, 85.

  64. 64.

    Eileen Denn Jackson, “The Lyricism of Abjection in Paula Meehan’s Drama of Imprisonment”, An Sionnach: A Journal of Literature, Culture, and the Arts, 5 (2009): 177.

  65. 65.

    Mountjoy Prison–Dóchas is a medium security prison for women aged over eighteen years, located in Dublin, Ireland.

  66. 66.

    Rosita Boland, “Out of the Joy”, Irish Times, September 11, 1999, accessed February 26, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/out-of-the-joy-html.

  67. 67.

    Boland, “Out of the Joy”, [n.p].

  68. 68.

    Jackson, “The Lyricism of Abjection”, 177.

  69. 69.

    Ibid.

  70. 70.

    Michael Pierse, “From Yeatsian Nightmares to Tallifornian Dreams: Reflections on Classism and Culture in ‘Classless’ Ireland”, in Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life, ed. David Convery (Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2013), 196.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 204.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 197–205.

  73. 73.

    Through the 1980s the community arts were successful at funding outside the confines of a limited budgetary line from the Arts Council, including European funding and Department of Labour and Community Employment Schemes, at times far surpassing the budget offered by the Council for the community arts.

  74. 74.

    Fitzgerald, “The Beginnings of Community Arts”, 75.

  75. 75.

    Annie Kilmartin is the founder of Moving Theatre and one of the founders of Community Arts For Everyone (CAFE). See Peter Crawley, “What on Earth is Community Art?” in Irish Times, December 7, 2004, accessed February 28, 2017, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/what-on-earth-is-community-art.html.

  76. 76.

    The third Arts Plan (2002–2006), while listing “concerns about the state of the arts”, makes no mention of the clear “disparity of access and participation between different groupings”. Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality”, 98–9.

  77. 77.

    Cocking cited in Clancy, “Rhetoric and Reality”, 107.

  78. 78.

    Long, “Come Dance with Me in Ireland”, 93.

  79. 79.

    Gorman, “Long Live the Fringe”, 4.

  80. 80.

    Morash , A History of Irish Theatre, 271.

  81. 81.

    Critical Moments: Fintan O’Toole on Modern Irish Theatre, 325.

  82. 82.

    John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 161.

  83. 83.

    Fitzgerald, “The Beginnings of Community Arts”, 79.

  84. 84.

    Peter Sheridan, “The Theatre and Politics,” in The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1977–1981, ed. M.P. Hederman et al. (Dublin: The Blackwater Press, 1982), 75.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sligo Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland

    Susanne Colleary

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  1. School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eamonn Jordan

  2. School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eric Weitz

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Colleary, S. (2018). Long Flame in the Hideous Gale: The Politics of Irish Popular Performance 1950–2000. In: Jordan, E., Weitz, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58588-2_13

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