Ireland Drama 1971 2015 David Grant Queens University Belfast 19711994 The Troubles Northern Ireland Somewhere between a wee bit of bother and Civil War ID: 811851
Download The PPT/PDF document "WAR & PEACE: Northern" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Slide1
WAR & PEACE:Northern Ireland Drama: 1971- 2015
David Grant, Queen’s University, Belfast
Slide21971-1994‘The Troubles’
Northern Ireland“Somewhere between ‘a wee bit of bother’ and Civil War”
Playwright Damian Gorman
“When are we ever going to get a Peace Product?”
Playwright Dave Duggan
1994-2015 ...
‘The Peace Process’
Slide3How the mainstream theatres addressed the violence from 1971-1998How the initiative has shifted to community-based practice as the Peace Process has progressed“The Theatre of Witness” as a case studyThree Main Themes
Slide4First produced in1998, the year of the Good Friday Agreement, a key moment in the Peace ProcessAn adult memory of a childhood friendship between two young boys in 1970, just before the start of the Northern Ireland TroublesThe adult actors play themselves as children symbolising the connection between the two yearsMojo Mickybo by Owen McCafferty
Slide5First produced in1998, the year of the Good Friday Agreement, a key moment in the Peace ProcessAn adult memory of a childhood friendship between two young boys in 1970, just before the start of the Northern Ireland TroublesThe adult actors play themselves as children symbolising the connection between the two yearsMojo Mickybo by Owen McCafferty
Slide6Slide7Segregation: Derry/Londonderry
Slide8Segregation: Belfast
Slide9A Belfast ‘Peace Wall’
Slide10The Northern Ireland Troubles
Slide11Early ‘Troubles’ Drama
“The Flats” (1971)
Slide12Early ‘Troubles’ Drama
“We Do It for Love” (1975)
Slide13Troubles Drama (1979- 1982)
‘Tea in a
China Cup’
by
Christina Reid
‘Dockers’
by
Martin Lynch
‘The Hidden Curriculum’ by Graham Reid
Slide14‘Dockers’ by Martin Lynch (1979)
Slide15‘The Hidden Curriculum’ by Graham Reid (1982)
Slide16‘Tea in a China Cup’ by Christina Reid (1983)
Slide17The Long View
‘Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme’ by Frank McGuinness (1985)
‘Translations’ by Brian Friel (1980)
1980s
Slide18Northern Star by Stewart Parker1984
Slide19Dan Gordon in ‘A Night in November’
1994
Slide20CONVICTIONS (Tinderbox Theatre Company) Daragh Carville Damian Gorman Marie JonesMartin LynchNicola McCartneyOwen McCafferty
Gary Mitchell
1999
Slide21Rooted in the local communityTends towards the benefit of that communityActively involves the participation of local peopleReflects local themes and experienceProfessional involvement should be aimed at leaving skills in the communityCommunity Drama places more emphasis on process than on productCommunity Drama
Grant (1993),
Playing the Wild Card
Slide22The Wedding Community Play (2000)
Slide23Ballybeen Community Theatre (Protestant)Dockward Community Theatre (Catholic)Real World Theatre Company (Disabilities)Stone Chair Community Theatre (Catholic) Tongue΄n Cheek Theatre Company (Catholic)Shankill Theatre Company (Protestant)Participating Groups
Slide24Slide25Martin Lynch
Marie Jones
Slide26‘The Magnificent Seven’ Syndrome
Slide27Process & Product
Slide28From Intervention
Slide29... to Participation...
Slide30... To Agency
Slide31Augusto Boal
Slide32“The word spoken will never be the word heard...The theatre, sum of all languages, helps make dialogue possible. If I do not understand the word, I understand the gesture; if not the gesture, the sound; if not the sound, the silence; if not the silence the tone; if not the tone, the movement... The mind also speaks through the senses
.” Augusto Boal (Aesthetics of the Oppressed)
Slide33There are many ways of making stage images:Sometimes they emerge from group discussionsSometimes actors allow themselves to be ‘sculpted’ by a single author. But the approach I want to consider today is how an image can develop from the accumulative actions of a number of collaboratorsImage Theatre Modes
Slide34Spontaneous Image-making
Slide35Slide36Slide37Slide38Slide39How is meaning made by both the image-maker and the image-viewer?This can be understood as a dialogue, and as Bakhtin pointed out, dialogue is initiated by the hearer, or in this case the viewerMaking images through the process of ‘Image Theatre’ is an embodied process We think through our bodiesHow does ‘Image Theatre’ work?
Slide40As Merleau-Ponty expressed it, ‘the body converts a certain motor essence into vocal form’ (107)‘One could imagine gesture as the origin of spoken language... A special kind of oral motility. Speech on this view would be a sophisticated movement of the body’ (ibid.)‘Gestures… are both products and active producers of… brain organisation’ (128)‘How the Body Shapes the Mind’Shaun Gallagher (2005), Oxford: Clarendon Press
Slide41Sarajevo2010
Slide42Sarajevo2010
Slide43Sarajevo2010
Slide44Haifa2007
Slide45Changing Pers
pectives
1993
2012
Slide46Belfast2011
Slide47A Frozen Peace Process?
Slide48We tend to ‘stand between’ the image and audiences by translating images into words. In doing so we impose one interpretation on the images, thus dismissing the possibility that the images may have more than one meaning. (Strecker 1997)Images are Dynamic
Slide49A form of performance in which:“the true stories of those who have been marginalised, forgotten or hurt by society are woven into collaborative theatre productions and are performed by the people themselves in spoken word, movement, music and visual imagery”. (TEYA SEPINUCK)‘Theatre of Witness’
Slide50“Once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up,And hope and history rhyme”“Hope for a great sea-changeOn the far side of revenge”Seamus Heaney
Slide51To ‘Troubles Legacy’From ‘Peace Dividend…’
Slide52We Carried Your Secrets (2009)
Slide53I Once Knew a Girl… (2010)
Slide54Release (2012)
Slide55The TRC has been heavily criticised in South Africa for the compromise made in the name of ‘national unity’ and reconciliation that allowed many to walk free while conditions they had perpetrated under apartheid, and that had reduced so many to poverty and powerlessness, remained intact. The Example of South Africa
Slide56Standing Shoulder to Shoulder
Slide57“[a]n old ewe that somehow till this year/had given the ram the slip. We thought her barren… While they [Northern Ireland’s political factions] slog it out in Belfast, eight decades/since Easter 1916, exhausted, tamed by pain [a particularly insightful phrase]… the lamb won’t come… We strain together, harder than we dared… and you find us/peaceful, at a cradling that might have been a death”Gillian Clarke, ‘A Difficult Birth’
Slide58the very foundation of ‘Theatre of Witness’. We live in a culture where high value is placed on knowing facts, achieving, proving ourselves, and being right. ‘Not knowing’ undercuts all of that, allowing us to see things afresh, to come in without an agenda or judgement. “Not Knowing”
Slide59to enlarge one’s sphere of understanding in order to contain these opposites. It means holding the story in a vastness that’s bigger than ‘either/or’. It’s when a multiplicity of meanings can co-exist that a new paradigm can be envisaged‘Holding the Paradox’
Slide60a slanging match of binaries, each side hurling false dichotomies at the other – insisting that every aspect of [an] unfolding crisis can be reduced to an either/or choice, when in fact the truth very often comes down to both… But the world is not like that. It is rarely black v white. It usually requires us to hold two apparently contradictory thoughts in our head at onceJonathan Freedland
Slide61Image Theatre in Jerusalem
Slide62Image Problems
Slide63Robin Young
Slide64Slide65Slide66“What you’re trying to do is get everyone in touch with their own story. Not – ‘I could be you’ but – ‘I am you’.” Tony Carlin (Counsellor)
Slide67Boal, A. (2002). Games for Actors and Non-Actors, 2nd Edition (London: Routledge)Boal, A (2006). Aesthetics of the Oppressed (Routledge)Clarke, Gillian (1998). ‘A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998’ in Five Fields, Carcanet PressFreedland, Jonathan (2014). ‘As the Ukraine debate rages, both sides are getting it wrong’. The Guardian, Friday 7th March, 2014David Grant, Playing the Wild Card (1993: CRC) http://www.community-relations.org.uk/services/publications/ Grant, David & Matthew Jennings (2013). ‘Processing the Peace: An Interview with Teya Sepinuck’ in Contemporary Theatre Review, 23:3, 314-322Heaney, Seamus (1990). The Cure at Troy, London: Faber
Moariarty, Gerri (2004), ‘The Wedding Community Play Project: a cross-community play project in Northern Ireland’: in: Boon, Richard and Jane Plastow (eds.), Theatre and Empowerment. Cambridge: CUPRoe, Pegg and Hodges (1999). ‘Forgiving the Other Side: Social Identity and Ethnic Memories in Northern Ireland’ in Politics and Performance in Contemporary Northern Ireland, ed. by John P. Harrington and Elizabeth J. Mitchell, American Conference for Irish StudiesSepinuck, Teya
(2013).
Theatre of Witness
(London: Jessica Kingsley
)
Gallagher, S (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press)
References