Ireland Memory And Performing The Historical Imagination

Irish theatre and performance has a perennial impetus to hold a mirror up to the nation. However, the performance of collective memories and forgotten histories creates a peculiar problem for this impetus; all of a sudden unorthodox memories and histories are brought into public performance spaces where they proceed to question idealized reflections.

At a time when Ireland's political, cultural and economic climate is changing rapidly, Ireland is once again at odds with the proverbial looking glass. Written by leading experts in their particular fields, each chapter included in this collection locates a performance of memory and/or forgotten history which reconsiders the archive of Irish theatre and performance by rewriting what has been written out.

In doing so, this book serves as an intervention into, or anticipation of, the future marginalization of alternative processes of performance. Review: 'With such a rich diversity of critical voices and perspectives, this laudable and exceptionally wide-ranging collection astutely brings to bear on Irish theatre historiography numerous marginalized discourses that address the interfaces between society, texts, archives, cultural memory and performance research.

These essays address legacy, heritage, recollection, remembrance, neglected or denied histories, counter-normative and minority pasts, and the re-possession of the repressed in ways that memory and history interdigitate to complicate relationships between presence and absence, amnesia and awareness, censorship and enablement.

Interfaces between fiction, performance, intervention and a utopian consciousness are deemed to be hugely important. Judicious, imaginative, thought-provoking and on many occasions very surprising, this new collected body of work adds with great distinction to the ever-expanding field of Irish Theatre scholarship and will appeal greatly to those interested in Irish, Memory and Performance Studies.' - Eamonn Jordan, University College Dublin, Ireland