This book stages a timely discussion about the centrality of identity politics to theatre and performance studies. It acknowledges the important close relationship between the discourses and practices historically while maintaining that theatre and performance can enlighten ways of being with others that are not limited by conventional identitarian languages. The essays engage contemporary theatre and performance practices that pose challenging questions about identity, as well as subjectivity, relationality, and the politics of aesthetics, responding to neo-liberal constructions and exploitations of identity by seeking to discern, describe, or imagine a new political subject. Chapters by leading international scholars look to visual arts practice, digital culture, music, public events, experimental theatre, and performance to investigate questions about representation, metaphysics, and politics. The collections seeks to foreground shared, universalist connections that unite rather than divide, visiting metaphysical questions of being and becoming, and the possibilities of producing alternate realities and relationalities. The book asks what is at stake in thinking about a subject, a time, a place, and a performing arts practice that would come 'after' identity, and explores how theatre and performance pose and interrogate these questions.

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.

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.

The highly performative categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are in need of critical address, prompted by recent changes in Irish society, the arts industry and modes of critical inquiry. This book broaches this task by considering Irish expressive culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies.

The highly performative categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are in need of critical address, prompted by recent changes in Irish society, the arts industry and modes of critical inquiry. This book broaches this task by considering Irish expressive culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies.

The highly performative categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are in need of critical address, prompted by recent changes in Irish society, the arts industry and modes of critical inquiry. This book broaches this task by considering Irish expressive culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies.

'Tender and rigorous, this book invites readers to linger with difficult pasts and consider how best to grasp their hauntings, demands and manifestations in the present. This is a book about mourning as well as holding, a simultaneous act of exhumation and a laying to rest.' anna six, author of Madness, Art, and Society: Beyond Illness ‘This is an extraordinary book, in which queer theatre and performance become sites of celebration and resistance, as well as holding the potential for performers and audiences to work through painfully felt yet difficult to articulate experiences towards feelings of hope. Replete with rigorous, generous and creative readings, it is also a meditation on Walsh’s own emotional engagement with queer theatre and performance, and how our cultural attachments can sustain, enliven and contain us.’ Noreen Giffney, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author of The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis Why do contemporary queer theatre and performance appear to be possessed by the past? What aesthetic practices and dramaturgical devices reveal the occupation of the present by painful history? How might the experience of theatre and performance relieve the present of its most arduous burdens? Following recent legislation and cultural initiatives across many Western countries hailed as confirming the darkest days for LGBTQ+ people were over, this book turns our attention to artists fixed on history’s enduring harm. Guiding us through an eclectic range of examples including theatre, performance, installation and digital practices, Fintan Walsh explores how this work reckons with complex cultural and personal histories. Among the issues confronted are the incarceration of Oscar Wilde, the Holocaust, racial and sexual objectification, the AIDS crisis and Covid-19, alongside more local and individual experiences of violence, trauma and grief. Walsh traces how the queer past is summoned and interrogated via what he elaborates as the aesthetics and dramaturgies of possession, which lend form to the still-stinging aches and generative potential of injury, injustice and loss. These strategies expose how the past continues to haunt and disturb the present, while calling on those of us who feel its force to respond to history’s unresolved hurt.

This collection is a record of some of the most important performative ideas and embodied interventions that have shaped queer culture and theatre and performance practice in Ireland in recent times, principally in the years following the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1993, up to and including the present. The anthology includes plays, experimental performance documentation, and a visual essay that reveal the impassioned creativity that illuminates and invigorates the margins of culture.

To what extent is theatre a contagious practice, capable of undoing and enlivening people and cultures? Theatres of Contagion responds to some of the anxieties of our current political and cultural climate by exploring theatre's status as a contagious cultural force, questioning its role in the spread or control of medical, psychological and emotional conditions and phenomena. Observing a diverse range of practices from the early modern to contemporary period, the volume considers how this contagion is understood to happen and operate, its real and imagined effects, and how these have been a source of pleasure and fear for theatre makers, audiences and authorities. Drawing on perspectives from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and affect theory, essays investigate some of the ways in which theatre can be viewed as a powerful agent of containment and transmission. Among the works analysed include a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a contemporary queer take on Hamlet; Grand Guignol and theatres of horror; the writings and influence of Artaud; immersive theatre and the work of Punchdrunk, and computer gaming and smartphone apps

To what extent is theatre a contagious practice, capable of undoing and enlivening people and cultures? Theatres of Contagion responds to some of the anxieties of our current political and cultural climate by exploring theatre's status as a contagious cultural force, questioning its role in the spread or control of medical, psychological and emotional conditions and phenomena. Observing a diverse range of practices from the early modern to contemporary period, the volume considers how this contagion is understood to happen and operate, its real and imagined effects, and how these have been a source of pleasure and fear for theatre makers, audiences and authorities. Drawing on perspectives from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and affect theory, essays investigate some of the ways in which theatre can be viewed as a powerful agent of containment and transmission. Among the works analysed include a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a contemporary queer take on Hamlet; Grand Guignol and theatres of horror; the writings and influence of Artaud; immersive theatre and the work of Punchdrunk, and computer gaming and smartphone apps

In the wake of Ireland's recent economic rise, fall, and associated social crises, theatre and performance have played vital roles in reflecting on the past, engaging the present, and imagining possible futures. That Was Us features a wide, rich range of critical essays and artist reflections that strive to make sense of some of the most significant shifts and trends in contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Focusing on artists connected to the Dublin Theatre Festival, the book addresses work by the Abbey Theatre, ANU Productions, Brokentalkers, The Corn Exchange, Druid, Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, the Gate Theatre, Landmark Productions, Rough Magic Theatre Company, THEATREclub, Theatre Lovett, Pan Pan, The Stomach Box and THISISPOPBABY, among others. Some of the burgeoning forms and practices discussed include: site-specific and site-responsive theatre; testimonial, documentary, and biographical performance; dance theatre; theatre for children and families; new writing; and fresh takes on canonical writing staged at home or toured internationally. In bringing together critics and artists to think side by side, That Was Us is indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary practices and cultural politics. Contents 1. The Power of the Powerless: Theatre in Turbulent Times by Fintan Walsh ONE: Theatres of Testimony 2. ANU Productions and Site-Specific Performance: The Politics of Space and Place by Brian Singleton 3. Witnessing the (Broken) Nation: Theatre of the Real and Social Fragmentation in Brokentalkers' Silver Stars, The Blue Boy, and Have I No Mouth by Charlotte McIvor 4. You Had to be There by Louise Lowe TWO: Auto/Biographical Performance 5. Making Space: Female-Authored Queer Performance in Irish Theatre by Oonagh Murphy 6. The Writing Life by Helen Meany 7. Metaphysicians of Unnatural Chaos: Memories of Genesi by Societas Raffaello Sanzio by Dylan Tighe THREE: Bodies Out of Bounds 8. Insider and Outsider: Michael Keegan-Dolan in the Irish Dance Landscape by Michael Seaver 9. And the Adults Came Too! Dublin Theatre Festival and the Development of Irish Children's Theatre by Eimear Beardmore 10. Living Inspiration by John Scott FOUR: Placing Performance 11. Representations of Working-Class Dublin at the Dublin Theatre Festival by James Hickson 12. 'Getting Known': Beckett, Ireland, and the Creative Industries by Trish McTighe 13. The Art of Perspective by Michael West FIVE: Touring Performances 14. Druid Cycles: The Rewards of Marathon Productions by Tanya Dean 15. Staging the National in an International Context: Druid at the Dublin Theatre Festival by Sara Keating 16. Viewed from Afar: Contemporary Irish Theatre on the World's Stages by Peter Crawley 17. A Dance You Associate With Your Family by Gary Keegan

Walsh argues that there are many links between theatre and therapy when considering actor training, theatre in therapeutic contexts, and contemporary theatre and performance. He draws on a range of examples that include the drama of Sarah Kane, the method acting of Daniel Day Lewis and performances by Ruby Wax and David Hoyle.