EVENT: Theatre, politics, and community advocacy in northern Ireland after the conflict

Dr Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill 

Open University (UK)

Wednesday, 19 March 2025 | 14:00 (Nicosia) | 12:00 (Dublin)

Department of English Studies University of Cyprus

Register for Zoom attendance here.

Throughout the recent conflict in Ireland (1968-1998), the thorny and often conflicting issues of rights, identity and aspiration between the main traditions in the north of Ireland were explored in works of theatre developed with communities by theatre professionals. This applied theatre sought to support these communities in telling their stories, and to bring them into dialogic contact with one another for the purpose of reconciliation. In the period after 1998, the nature of this applied theatre with communities, like all else in northern Irish society, changed fundamentally. It is these theatre productions, the ways in which they have been authored, and the structures that underpin them that are explored in a new publication by Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill called Theatre and politics in post-conflict northern Ireland.

This presentation explores some of the findings published in the book, and examines how theatre has been used to negotiate community identity, promote peaceful community advocacy, and deal with the traumas of the conflict legacy. It explores the ways in which communities and the professional theatre sector have responded to the seismic changes in northern Irish society. It documents the turn toward the performance of identity through theatre as against street protests and direct action, and shows how northern Ireland’s communities favoured creativity over destructiveness, advocacy theatre over intercommunal conflict.