Performance Art In Ireland

This book, the first devoted to the history and contemporary forms of Irish performance art in the north and south of Ireland, brings together contributions by prominent Irish artists and major academics. It features rigorous critical and theoretical analysis as well as historical commentaries that provide an absorbing sense of the rich histories of performance art in Ireland. Presenting diverse visual documentation of performance art practices, this collection shows how performance art in Ireland engaged with – and in turn influenced and led – contemporary performance and Live Art internationally. Co-published with Live Art Development Agency.

The Irish contribution to world theatre is famous, but today awareness of Irish theatrical activity is chiefly confined to the modern period. This book corrects that imbalance with an unparalleled study of the early history of drama and performance in Ireland, from the seventh century through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and ending on the eve of the arrival of Oliver Cromwell. The work of professional entertainers is discussed, as is that of amateurs, in theatricals sponsored by churches, guilds, civic authorities, and aristocratic patrons. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, many unpublished, Alan Fletcher opens up a vibrant but forgotten Irish landscape in which drama and performance collaborated actively in the mapping and manufacture of social history. Modern Irish drama is acknowledged as having a rich and vibrant tradition. Drama, Performance and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland helps to show how that vibrant tradition of drama and theatre has a very long history. Dr. Fletcher deals not only with performance traditions outside the Pale in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but for the first time delves into such traditions as can be gleaned about Gaelic Ireland during the preceding millennium. Fletcher surveys the 'native' traditions beyond the Pale; early and sixteenth-century activities within Dublin; Kilkenny drama; provincial centres outside Dublin; and Dublin in the seventeenth century up to the arrival of Oliver Cromwell, when the Irish theatres were closed.

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.

Drawing on major new archival discoveries and recent research, Patrick Lonergan presents an innovative account of Irish drama and theatre, spanning the past seventy years. Rather than offering a linear narrative, the volume traces key themes to illustrate the relationship between theatre and changes in society. In considering internationalization, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Celtic Tiger period, feminism, and the changing status of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Lonergan asserts the power of theatre to act as an agent of change and uncovers the contribution of individual artists, plays and productions in challenging societal norms. Irish Drama and Theatre since 1950 provides a wide-ranging account of major developments, combined with case studies of the premiere or revival of major plays, the establishment of new companies and the influence of international work and artists, including Tennessee Williams, Chekhov and Brecht. While bringing to the fore some of the untold stories and overlooked playwrights following the declaration of the Irish Republic, Lonergan weaves into his account the many Irish theatre-makers who have achieved international prominence in the period: Samuel Beckett, Siobhán McKenna and Brendan Behan in the 1950s, continuing with Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, and concluding with the playwrights who emerged in the late 1990s, including Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh, Conor McPherson, Marie Jones and Marina Carr. The contribution of major Irish companies to world theatre is also examined, including both the Abbey and Gate theatres, as well as Druid, Field Day and Charabanc. Through its engaging analysis of seventy years of Irish theatre, this volume charts the acts of gradual but revolutionary change that are the story of Irish theatre and drama and of its social and cultural contexts.

The Irish Times literary editor Fintan O'Toole selects 100 artworks to narrate a history of Ireland.

This book explores histories which have only recently been rediscovered by artists and researchers. This study explores the history of Portuguese performance art, in its various "speculative" and "performative" forms. The author approaches this relationship with the re-emergence and centrality of these (semi-)peripheral histories at an international level, whilst identifying some of their unique traits: their cycles of emergence and retraction in Portuguese history; their multiple and complex ontologies; the intertwined relations between the art of performance and the social performance of the Portuguese (regarding topics as sensitive and fracturing as those of the long dictatorship, the colonial war and the revolutionary process, or even the integration of Portugal in the European Community and, more recently, the various 21st century social, political and economic crises). This reading in turn covers the development of the relationship between performance and hybridism, namely, analyzing the recent dimension of meta-hybridism, in the processes of artistic homage that contemporary Portuguese creators have been establishing through access to the histories and archives of this historical genre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies, performance art and arts in general.

The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art offers a comprehensive guide to the major issues and interdisciplinary debates concerning performance in art contexts that have developed over the last decade. It understands performance art as an institutional, cultural, and economic phenomenon rather than as a label or object. Following the ever-increasing institutionalization and mainstreaming of performance, the book's chapters identify a marked change in the economies and labor practices surrounding performance art, and explore how this development is reflective of capitalist approaches to art and event production. Embracing what we perceive to be the 'oxymoronic status' of performance art-where it is simultaneously precarious and highly profitable-the essays in this book map the myriad gestures and radical possibilities of this extreme contradiction. This Companion adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to present performance art's legacies and its current practices. It brings together specially commissioned essays from leading innovative scholars from a wide range of approaches including art history, visual and performance studies, dance and theatre scholarship in order to provide a comprehensive and multifocal overview of the emerging research trends and methodologies devoted to performance art.

This book explores the performance of Irish collective memories and forgotten histories. It proposes an alternative and more comprehensive criterion of Irish theatre practices. These practices can be defined as the 'rejected', contested and undervalued plays and performativities that are integral to Ireland's political and cultural landscapes.