Irish Performance and Social Change: Politics and Aesthetics

Dr. Ciara Murphy and Dr. Emer O’Toole have both recently published books on the relationship between Irish theatre and social change. Dr. Murphy’s book encapsulates The Troubles, the Peace Process, Second-Wave Feminism, the Celtic Tiger, social revolution, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses lenses of place, performance form, and social context to complicate narratives of nationhood. Dr. O’Toole’s study ranges from the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993 to the repeal of the 8th amendment in 2018. It has an aesthetic focus, asking what happens to beauty, meaning, and affect when artists’ aims are activist.

This event will begin as a conversation between the authors, then open up to a broader discussion with attendees. All welcome. If you’d like to read some of the texts beforehand but don’t have access, please get in touch with Dr. O’Toole at emer.otoole@concordia.ca.

Dr Emer O’Toole, Associate Professor, School of Irish Studies, Concordia University, Montreal.

Dr Ciara Murphy, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Creative Arts, Media, and Music, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk.