1 Introduction: Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland
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Notes 1 Introduction: Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland 1. The Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre, is so named on account of its location on Abbey Street Lower, Dublin 1. It contains a main stage on ground level, known as the Abbey Theatre, and a small downstairs space known as the Peacock Theatre. The Risen People was first produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1958, and revived with this production from 4 December 2013 to 1 February 2014, adapted by Jimmy Fay from a version by Jim Sheridan, and directed by Fay. 2. It is understood the term ‘Celtic Tiger’ was first used by Morgan Stanley invest- ment bank in 1994 to refer to Ireland’s economic boom, which exploded at the time. Previously, ‘tiger’ economies referred to growing Asian markets including those of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The global financial crisis of 2008 affected countries around the world, supplying the last blow to the already ailing Irish economy. 3. Male homosexual activity was considered illegal under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, and the 1885 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act. These were enacted by the Parliament of the UK before Irish independence, and therefore affected both countries. The law was repealed in England and Wales in 1967 and Scotland in 1980. It was not repealed in Northern Ireland until 1982, after Jeffrey Dudgeon took a case against the UK to the European Court of Human Rights, and in the Republic of Ireland in 1993, after David Norris took action against the state to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming the laws against homosexual- ity infringed constitutional rights to privacy. 4. Performative understandings of identity are particularly indebted to Judith Butler’s work, especially Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1990). Contemporary thinking about inter- sectional identity politics is vast and varied, even though Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s early essay ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’ is deemed foundational. See the article in University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140 (1989): 139–67. 5. José Esteban Muñoz describes queerness in affective terms as ‘that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.’ See José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), p. 1. 6. Civil partnerships in Ireland are granted under the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010, and a referendum proposing same-sex civil marriage has just passed on 22 May 2015, which will enshrine into law that ‘Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex,’ as per the wording of the Thirty-Fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015. Civil partnerships in Northern Ireland are granted under the Civil Partnership 147 148 Notes Act 2004, though same-sex civil marriage is not available, largely due to resist- ance from the DUP (see chapter 3 for a further discussion of this.) Under the Republic’s Adoption Act 2010, the non-marital family was not recognised by the Irish Constitution, and it did not enjoy the same legal rights and obliga- tions as the family based on marriage. Overriding this law, the Republic’s Children and Family Relationships Act was enacted into law in April 2015. This law clarifies legal issues surrounding parentage, guardianship, custody and access for diverse families, and was strategically pushed through by the govern- ment in advance of the same-sex marriage referendum. In Northern Ireland, unmarried couples can apply to adopt. This was ensured after a ban preventing gay and unmarried couples from applying to adopt was lifted in 2013 by a Supreme Court ruling. 7. Despite its importance and influence, I do not think that Frank McGuinness’s drama fits neatly into the tradition I’m mapping here, which is explicitly con- cerned with contemporary queer cultural politics and socio-political issues, including offering critiques of the Celtic Tiger era and its effects. McGuinness’s queer drama, on the other hand, is typically set in a historical past, even if in so doing it can be seen to comment upon the present. Also, McGuinness’s drama is so rich and vast that it would risk overshadowing the work I focus on here, none of which has enjoyed a similar level of attention to date. Numerous studies have already been written on McGuinnness’s theatre, with David Cregan provid- ing a queer reading of his drama in Frank McGuinness’s Dramaturgy of Difference and the Irish Theatre (New York: Peter Lang, 2011). Brian Singleton also offers a queer interpretation of some of McGuinness’s plays in Masculinities and the Contemporary Irish Theatre (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), especially in chapter 5. 8. For further insight on the influence of Oscar Wilde on Ireland, see Eibhear Walshe’s Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011). 9. Eibhear Walshe, ‘Queer Oscar: Versions of Wilde on the Irish Stage and Screen,’ in Deviant Acts: Essays on Queer Performance, ed. David Cregan (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2009), pp. 7–24; 7. 10. See Kieran Rose, Diverse Communities: The Evolution of Lesbian and Gay Politics in Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994), p. 12. 11. See David Cregan, ‘Irish Theatrical Celebrity and the Critical Subjugation of Difference in the Work of Frank McGuinness’, Modern Drama, 47.04 (2004): 671–85. 12. While this production was undoubtedly at least symbolically important, I do not focus on it in great depth here, insofar as its timing, reception and the play’s US origin and cultural specificity remain outside the immediate remit of this study. Additionally, I chart new performance and writing that develops from the performative practices of more locally grounded activism and politics, and more specifically work that explicitly engages the Celtic Tiger era. To read more about this production, and Patrick Mason’s role in staging queer work at the Abbey Theatre during his tenure as Artistic Director, see the excellent discussion in Patrick Lonergan’s Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 128–62. For Lonergan, a key reason for the production’s ‘failure’ was the fact that it was a relatively new play being staged in the summer months, a time when tourists craved more familiar Irish drama. Notes 149 13. Electric Picnic is an annual music and arts festival which has taken place in Stradbally, County Laois, since its founding in 2004. 14. The names of Dublin Theatre Festival and Dublin Fringe Festival have altered over the years to reflect new sponsorship arrangements. Owing to support by Ulster Bank, Dublin Theatre Festival became Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival from 2007 to 2011. Due to sponsorship by Absolut Vodka, Dublin Fringe Festival became Absolut Dublin Fringe Festival from 2009–2012, and with support from Tiger beer, it became Tiger Dublin Fringe in 2014. Given that sponsors change, and sometimes disappear altogether, I do not include them in references to festi- vals throughout the book. 15. According to Katherine O’Donnell, the Dublin-based festival arose from the Lesbian Lives conference at University College Dublin in 1999, formalising and running annually since 2002. See ‘Introduction: Lesbian Lives and Studies in Ireland at the Fin de Siècle,’ in Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives; Histories of Sexualities: Volume I, eds. Mary McAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), pp. 1–26; 8. The festival is no longer run- ning, having recently petered out. 16. See 2004 overview posted on the organisation’s website. Read online at http:// www.gaytheatre.ie/archive/html/2004_overview.html. Viewed 27 May 2015. 17. Even what seemed like the most staid heterosexual festival of all, the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival, which aims to pair up lonely bachelors with single women, evolved a gay wing in 2013, with the establishment of The Outing Lisdoonvarna LGBT Matchmaking and Music Festival. And in 2014, the Rose of Tralee International Festival, which celebrates twee notions of Irishness, the diaspora and women, for the first time in its history was won by an openly gay entrant, Maria Walsh. 18. Figures based on Central Statistics Office and FÁS Irish Labour Market Review 2006 and 2008. Reproduced in Peadar Kirby in Celtic Tiger in Collapse: Explaining the Weaknesses of the Irish Model (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 33. 19. Robert W. McChesney, ‘Introduction,’ in Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), pp. 7–18; 8. 20. See Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003). 21. Anne Mulhall, ‘Queer in Ireland: Deviant Filiation and the (Un)holy Family,’ in Queer in Europe, eds. Lisa Downing and Robert Gillett (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 99–112; 110. Mulhall’s discussion of homonationalism follows the think- ing of Jasbir K. Puar who describes how sexual minorities and gay subcultures are embraced and celebrated by the state, as long as they show allegiance by redefining new enemies. These tend to be religious or ethnic others, deemed to hold the state back, often from economic growth. Puar identifies Israel as an example of a state that cultivates the support of gay people in the service of arguing for the barbarism of parts of the Arab world. See Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 22. Anne Mulhall, ‘Queer in Ireland: Deviant filiation and the (un)holy family,’ p.