Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland

Dissent and Disorientation

Fintan Walsh

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137534507
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

This book examines the surge of queer performance produced across Ireland since the first stirrings of the Celtic Tiger in the mid-1990s, up to the passing of the Marriage Equality referendum in the Republic in 2015.

1

Introduction: Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland

Weaving my way through Bloomsbury on 2 February 2014, I’m glued to a performance at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, streaming from the iPhone in my hand. Drag performer Panti Bliss (Rory O’Neill) is delivering a speech about homophobia on the main stage of Ireland’s national theatre, following a production of James Plunkett’s play The Risen People (1958).¹ Surrounded by the cast, Panti has us imagine that we are standing at a pedestrian crossing being judged or threatened, as I curl my way towards Euston Station. While the theatre performance took place on 1 February, I’m watching it a day later as a YouTube clip shared on Twitter. Taking the bus home towards Hackney, I chat online with friends about the performance we have just seen, as if we are leaving the theatre together. Soon I’m communicating with people around the world. As a gay Irish man recently living in London, I feel strangely at home in this eddy of global exchange – proud, moved, encouraged – bobbing somewhere between the Abbey Theatre, the smartphone in my hand, and a bus journey eastwards. Panti’s performance, and its reception, make me feel a powerful sense of being a part of something important and vitalising – though of what, and just how this has happened, are not immediately clear.

This book attempts to understand how queer performance, including this opening scene (see pp. 41–4), articulates experiences of oppression, exclusion and displacement, while imagining and cultivating more accommodating, inclusive and sustaining modes of interpersonal intimacy, social support, public participation and cultural belonging. Although the book begins in London in 2014, the story it tells focuses on select work made and staged in Ireland during and just after the so-called Celtic Tiger era (which roughly spanned between 1995 and 2007, with the global economic crisis of 2008 precipitating a tumultuous national recession), tracing deeper roots along the way, and winding up in 2015 with the passing of the Marriage Equality referendum in the Republic.² While many of my core case studies focus on work produced after the decline of the economy, even these are shown to be very much products of the previous decade, insofar as they engage with this period’s impact and legacy, while also rehearsing strategies for what lies ahead. Following the decriminalisation of male homosexual activity in the Republic of Ireland in 1993, already decriminalised in Northern Ireland since 1982, unprecedented economic expansion in the Republic propelled the growth of the queer culture which supplies the backdrop to this study.³ This was manifest most obviously in the increased visibility of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) people across society and culture, with the free market embracing all emergent cultural identities, as long as they were fundamentally consumerist. Despite this pattern, and somewhat paradoxically, a great deal of the queer performance produced during this time illuminated the darker social consequences of frenzied capitalism, systemic state failings and pernicious cultural crises. Confounding neat parameters of time and geography, by shedding light on forgotten corners of twentieth-century Irish history and society, this work also offered an oblique critical optic through which the wider landscape of Irish culture might be viewed differently.

While I use the term ‘queer’ as a capacious index for a range of non-normative sexualities, bodies, desires and subject positions typically housed within the LGBTQ umbrella, I also deploy the term to track thoughts, feelings and actions that unsettle subjects from identity categories, and the social order that would otherwise fix them. In this sense, I locate queerness where subjectivity exceeds a single, knowable and commodifiable identity position (including male, female, Irish or even LGBT, for example), and identity is revealed as both performative (an effect of discourse and culture, as in Judith Butler’s work) and intersectional (interactive with multiple positions and categories including gender, sexuality, migration, religion, place, age, class, ethnicity, nationality etc.).⁴ We can also discern queerness, I propose, in aesthetic enactments that gesture towards innovative ways of imagining subjectivity and relationality, and sense it among those emotions, moods and sensations that tingle with the hope or need for brighter days to come.⁵ Understood in this braided way, queerness undermines presumptions of stability and certainty, and at its boldest aspires to alternative ways of being, doing, feeling and knowing. In paying particular attention to registers of affect and phenomenology in this book, my thinking is inspired by the theoretical writings of Sara Ahmed (especially Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others [2006]), though my methodology ultimately draws on an eclectic range of perspectives from queer studies (Elizabeth Freeman, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick), performance studies (Jill Dolan, José Esteban Muñoz) and continental philosophy (Jacques Rancière).

Most of my insights are gleaned from engaging with live performance, sometimes drawing on text and archival records too. Although I refer to ‘performance’ throughout, my examples are not confined to conventional theatre settings, but also take place in pubs and clubs; a guesthouse and a disused shed; across radio, television and social media; on streets and in the open air. I draw on this range to reflect the variety of sites and contexts in which queer culture is enacted, often outside the main stages and borders of official culture. While this book’s explicit focus is queer performance, however, it is no less about transformations in contemporary Irish theatre. In fact, one of my driving contentions is not just that queer performance has flourished in the past two decades, but that it has radically altered the landscape of Irish theatre more broadly. Certainly, queer performance has been an important vehicle for staging those experiences and concerns which might seem particular to LGBTQ people – e.g. relating to social recognition and legal protection, including civil partnership (available in the Republic of Ireland since 2011, and Northern Ireland since 2005), civil marriage (enabled by a referendum in the Republic on 22 May 2015, favoured by 62.1% of the electorate, making Ireland the first country in the world to legalise it by popular vote; though still unavailable in Northern Ireland), and adoption legislation – but it has also been an important force in Irish theatre’s reckoning with this period on a much broader level.⁶ As we will see in the chapters that follow, queer performance has been instrumental in exploring the interconnection between gender and sexuality and issues of migration, religion, place, age, economics and class, ethnicity and national identity – all of which were affected by the boom years and their aftermath. In responding to these subjects, queer performance has not only drawn upon existing theatrical paradigms, but also recast established forms, advancing some of the most prominent contemporary practices including solo and biographical performance, documentary theatre, site-specific interventions and musical idioms. It has also contributed to reorienting Irish theatre’s fixation on national identity and postcolonial critical paradigms, by exploring more affective and phenomenological ways of responding to and being in the world.

Across the chapters, the book addresses the following questions: 1) How has queer performance been shaped by or engaged with the Celtic Tiger era and its expiration?; 2) What have been the core social, cultural and political concerns of these performances, and how do they relate to broader questions affecting contemporary Ireland in a global context?; 3) How has queer performance culture enhanced or redirected the thematic, aesthetic and formal conventions of Irish theatre?; and 4) How has queer performance culture intervened in the way we think about questions of interpersonal intimacy, social support, public participation and cultural belonging?

Plotting performance

While this book does not attempt to offer a complete history of queer performance in Ireland, the examples drawn together constitute a pivotal and exemplary body of practice, concentrating on LGBTQ cultural politics during the Celtic Tiger era and its aftermath. In the earlier publication Queer Notions: New Plays and Performances from Ireland (2010), I outline some of the most significant dramatic, theatrical and legal antecedents to the work profiled here, to the extent that I will try to avoid repeating myself too much. Nonetheless, it is worth reviewing some of the most important interventions in LGBTQ representation and practice, insofar as they supply an important foundation for the performances considered in this study.

For their ground-breaking representations of queer identities in the twentieth century, we cannot underestimate the importance of drama by Brendan Behan (The Hostage/An Giall, Damer Hall, Dublin, 1958); Thomas Kilroy (The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, Olympia Theatre, Dublin, 1968; The Shape of Metal, Abbey Theatre, 2003); and Brian Friel (The Gentle Island, Olympia Theatre, 1971). Frank McGuinness’s work stands out for frequently deploying queer characters and aesthetics in order to revise dominant historical narratives and imagine them differently (e.g. Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Peacock Theatre, Dublin, 1985; Carthaginians, Peacock Theatre, 1988; Dolly West’s Kitchen, Abbey Theatre, 1999; and Gates of Gold, Gate Theatre, Dublin, 2002).⁷ Originally produced by Glasshouse Productions, Emma Donoghue’s nineteenth-century historical dramas (I Know My Own Heart, Andrews Lane Theatre, 1993; Ladies and Gentlemen, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 1996) worked to similar effect, while focusing on lesbian experience. Deirdre Kinahan’s Passage (2001) also centralises lesbian characters, to explore tensions around sexuality, class and diasporic identity.

Some productions have taken a targeted look at topical social issues affecting LGBTQ people. Produced by Operating Theatre at Project Arts Centre, Aidan Mathews’ The Diamond Body (1984) portrayed the murder of the hermaphroditic Stephanos (played by Olwen Fouéré), the owner of a gay club on a Greek island. Addressing similar issues, though with a more obvious local resonance, Aodhán Madden’s Sea Urchins (1988) explored the murder of a gay man by a group of teenagers. First produced by Acorn at the Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, the play clearly referenced the homophobia-motivated murder of Declan Flynn in 1982, for which the killers received suspended sentences. Premiered by Red Kettle Theatre Company in Waterford, Jim Nolan’s Moonshine (1991) dramatises the efforts of an amateur theatre company to mount a production, while also trying to manage one of the male cast member’s hidden homosexuality. AIDS appears as an explicit concern in Geraldine Aron’s The Stanley Parkers (1990), first staged by Druid, which focuses on the lives of long-term gay couple, Dimitri and Stanley. Also featuring discussions of AIDS, and a gay male character, is Declan Hughes’s Digging for Fire (1991). First produced by Rough Magic Theatre Company at Project Arts Centre, the play focuses on the reunion party of a group of almost thirty-somethings that turns from nostalgia to violence. Set in 1993, though premiering at Project Arts Centre in 1996, Gerard Stembridge’s The Gay Detective is a thriller and a love story that pivots on a Garda superintendent discovering that his sergeant, Pat, is gay; and the murder of a gay politician, intimated to refer to Emmet Stagg, who was found in a well-known cruising area of Dublin’s Phoenix Park in 1994. Rosaleen McDonagh’s writing frequently explores issues around traveller identity and disability, subjects rarely broached in Irish theatre, despite in need of address. Her play Mainstream focuses on the intersection of disability with homosexuality, though to date it has only received a rehearsed reading at Project Arts Centre in 2012.

Dance has also exerted a significant influence over the staging of queer experience, and the evolution of queer aesthetics beyond verbal forms. This is especially true of MaNDaNCE, founded by Paul Johnson in 1991, which explored gay male sexuality in works such as Sweat (1994) and Beautiful Tomorrow (1996), both produced at Project Arts Centre. A queer impulse ripples through much of CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s work, founded by David Bolger in 1995 – in particular the sexually fluid Knots (2005), first performed at Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin. Fearghus Ó Conchúir’s dance performance is often homoerotically charged, perhaps no more so than Match (short film, 2006; performance, 2007), a duet for two men presented as GAA players in competition with each other. Based in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Ponydance Theatre Company has created a highly distinctive model of comedy dance theatre that frequently plays with gender and sexuality, such as in Straight to DVD (2012) and ponybois (2013).

Oscar Wilde’s visibility seemed to increase over the turn of the twenty-first century too, with his image serving as the face of the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival (2004–), as well as being the name of an Irish Ferries cruise ship since 2007. Conall Morrison’s all-male version of The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) at the Abbey Theatre in 2005 attempted to assert the sexual politics of Wilde’s work, even if it strained under the cross-dressed aesthetic.⁸ In the latter half of the twentieth century, Micheál Mac Liammóir (who set up the Gate Theatre with his partner Hilton Edwards) gained widespread attention and acclaim for his one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar (1960), which was based on the life of Wilde, premiering at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Despite the sexuality of both Mac Liammóir and Wilde, Eibhear Walshe suggests the production ‘heterosexualized Wilde’ by ignoring the sexual aspect of his final downfall, and by wallowing in the tragedy of his fate.⁹ The intimate life of Mac Liammóir and Edwards was the inspiration for McGuinness’s Gates of Gold.

The landscape of contemporary queer performance has also been shaped by seminal stagings of international work. In this regard, UK-based Gay Sweatshop’s production of Mister X and Any Woman Can at Project Arts Centre in 1976 is especially important. At the time the company was referred to as ‘a crowd of nancy-boys from across the water’ by a Fianna Fáil Councillor.¹⁰ Such was the level of controversy that Dublin Corporation (Dublin City Council) even withdrew its grant allowance from Project Arts Centre for a time. In 1981, Project Arts Centre went on to mount a production of Martin Sherman’s Bent (1979), which concerns the persecution of gay people in Nazi Germany. At the same venue, directed by Michael Scott, Machine Theatre Company produced Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (1985) in 1987. UK-based Gloria brought the musical theatre piece Sarrasine to Project Arts Centre in 1991. Based on a novel by Balzac, with libretto, direction and design by Neil Bartlett, the show drew links between castrati, drag performers and the gay culture of the time. Patrick Mason directed premiere productions of Frank McGuinness’s historical dramas in the 1980s and 1990s (see p.4), including during his tenure as Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre between 1993 and 1999. However, as David Cregan has argued, the queer component of the plays was often critically ignored or underexplored, if not downplayed in performance – very different to the works considered in this book.¹¹ Mason’s production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America – Part One: Millennium Approaches (1993) at the Abbey Theatre in 1995 was in principle an incredibly important moment in staging queer lives, illness, love and sex on stage, though it suffered from poor ticket sales. There are numerous reasons why this production did not have the impact one might expect, perhaps suffering from audiences’ lack of familiarity with the writer and p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Images
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland
• 2 Activism, Drag and Solo Performance
• 3 Reparative Therapies and Political Performers
• 4 Transforming Shame and Testimonial Performance
• 5 Intergenerational Moves and Documentary Theatre
• 6 Sex, Class and the City: Site-Specific Roots and Routes
• 7 Vertiginous Loss, Love and Belonging on the National Stage
• Afterword: Reeling-Feeling
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index