Posters

Enrica Cerquoni

University College Dublin

Re-visualising the Nation: Scenography and National Identity in Some Productions of Carr's By the Bog of Cats and Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa

‘Stage design, just as other areas of national culture, seeks its own national identity.’

Beginning from Jaroslav Malina's illuminating statement, this poster and its related paper invites the reader/viewer to explore scenographic realizations and uses of theatrical space in some productions of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa and Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats. This visual journey, interspersed with critical commentary and excerpts from interviews with scenographers as ‘visual’ directors, uncovers an alternative ‘truth/history/space’ to Irish theatrical art, one which is just not made of ‘words’ but also of images. Furthermore, these images become emblematic of the transformations in the notion of nationhood: they foreground a move away from a unified, stable and coherent notion of Ireland and Irishness. In doing so, they question the truth-value of identity as a point of origin in the cultural imagery of third-millennium European Ireland.

Deirdre McFeely

Trinity College Dublin

Dion Boucicault's ’Wearing of the Green‘

Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) frequently asserted that ‘plays are not written; they are rewritten’, and Arrah-na-Pogue, one of his most successful plays, bears testament to this claim. Originally licensed for a Manchester production in September 1864, the play, in a revised form, actually premiered in Dublin in November that year. A further revision opened in London the following March. An amended version of the London production was submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's censor for licensing after the play had opened. The poster will demonstrate the genesis of the play and Boucicault's avoidance of censorship on the London stage. In doing this, it will examine the banning of Boucicault's version of ‘The Wearing of the Green’, which is reputed to have taken place following the Fenian bombing of Clerkenwell prison, London, in December 1867.

Carmen Szabó

University College Dublin

History - The Final Frontier: The Theatrical ‘Adventures’ of Field Day Theatre Company Within and Across Borders

The problem of Northern Ireland as a country fragmented and disrupted by ancient feuds appears to be making the headlines again after a DUP election success. All through the years of the Troubles, there has been a tendency in Northern Ireland to use theatre as a way of defining the religious and national individuality of certain communities, Catholic/Nationalist or Protestant/Unionist, there being very little engagement in trying to unite the two viewpoints.

The Field Day Theatre Company, established in 1980 by Belfast-born Protestant actor Stephen Rea and Derry/Londonderry-born playwright Brian Friel, tried to give a different definition to theatre performance and reception in Ulster. A self-defined ‘touring company’, Field Day's main concerns were to address the concept of Irishness in its diversity, as much as possible in the space where they lived and worked.

This poster will look at the way in which the productions of The Field Day Theatre Company were received on both sides of the border. The main focus of the poster is on a particular production put on stage in 1988, Brian Friel's Making History, discussing the problem of history, historiography, and truth within the special environment of ‘border-crossing’ between the spaces of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England.