Queer Identities During the Troubles in Northern Ireland: the Birth of Queer Theatre in Northern Ireland
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1 Queer Identities During the Troubles in Northern Ireland: The Birth of Queer Theatre in Northern Ireland. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. University of East Anglia, Norwich by Joseph Grant Corr 2020 2 Abstract 'Exploring Queer Identities in Plays Written During the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969- 1998)' is the first truly concerted attempt to examine the placing of non-heteronormative characters into Irish or Northern Irish plays set within the time frame of the Troubles. These plays are few in number, comprising Brian Friel's The Gentle Island, Martin Lynch's Crack Up, Ecce Homo (written/devised by Joe Reid and Belfast Community Theatre) and Frank McGuinness's Carthaginians (alongside drafts of its earlier incarnation as Friends). The critical thesis begins by exploring the reasons for the scarcity of queer dramatic representation at this time, before focusing on the representation of queer characters within its corpus, and exploring the thematic and dramatic reasons for their inclusion. It proceeds through close textual analysis of all four of the plays, while consulting the writings of scholars, theatre practitioners and queer theorists alongside sociohistorical developments. Its final chapter also draws on archival material by McGuinness, which fills in a gap in the evolution of queer identity in Northern Irish theatre. The critical thesis as a whole traces an arc from the queer character deployed as a disruptive mechanism in Brian Friel’s early play The Gentle Island to fully-formed and unapologetic queer characterisation in McGuinness’ 1988 play Carthaginians. The insights of the critical thesis provide a context and a supplement to the creative thesis. In writing my own three plays I provide a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of Northern Ireland’s LGBT+ community during the Troubles, giving them a place in the country’s history. My play Pet Shop Boy, set in 1980’s East Belfast, looks at the Troubles and the queer experience through a Protestant lens, a viewpoint that has been overlooked. It explores queer identity through the coming out process of the sixteen-year-old protagonist, and uses the DUP’s Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign as a means to highlight the underlying societal homophobia that existed at the time. My second play Quarry, also set in the Protestant community, explores queer identity by going right to the heart of the Troubles, looking at toxic masculinity and queer identity inside a paramilitary unit. The final play in my collection places the queer Northern Irish experience in a modern-day context, examining how the Troubles of the past have shaped both the older and younger queer generations. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support, guidance and inspiration I have received from my supervisors Steve Waters and Clare Connors, who have given me their full support and guidance at every step of my research and the writing of my plays and thesis. I would like to thank my fellow colleagues on the PhD programme at UEA for their encouragement, insights and support. I would also like to thank the staff at University College Dublin’s special collection department for assisting me in accessing the archival material of Frank McGuinness. Thanks also go to Marie McCarthy at Omnibus Theatre, who helped me in the workshopping of my plays at various stages of their development. A special thank you for Susan Melrose, who first gave me the belief that I could accomplish a PhD in my chosen field. I am also very grateful to Niall Rea for his advice, support and insights. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family, who have been there from my initial idea to the final stages, giving me words of encouragement, time to off-load, attending my play readings and celebrating the small victories along the way. 4 Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................. 2 Contents ................................................................................................................... 4 Preface ...................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 11 0.1 Subject of thesis .................................................................................................. 14 0.2 Queer Rights ....................................................................................................... 17 0.3 Northern Irish theatre ........................................................................................ 16 0.4 My study ............................................................................................................. 22 1: Queer Disruptions: A time of Reinvention. (The Gentle Island: Brian Friel 1971). Introduction .............................................................................................................. 27 1.1 Inniskeen: A Hopeless State of Dysfunction ..................................................... 28 1.2 A Queering of the Heteronormative ................................................................ 34 1.3 Queer Constructions ........................................................................................ 37 1.4 In Conclusion .................................................................................................... 49 2. Belfast and the Queer Experience............................................................................. 53 2.1 Crack Up. Queer in the Family ...................................................................... 53 2.2 Masculinity and the Family .......................................................................... 55 2.3 Social Class through a Queer Lens ............................................................... 57 2.4 Queerness within ......................................................................................... 59 2.5 Ecce Homo: The Emergence of Gay Sexuality in 1980s Belfast .................... 66 3. Queer Confusions in Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians ........................................ 76 3.1 The Emergence of the Queer ........................................................................ 77 3.2 Carthaginians ................................................................................................ 83 3.3 Friends: The Abandoned Play ....................................................................... 99 4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 106 5. Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................... 110 6. Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 115 7. Pet Shop Boy ........................................................................................................... 124 8. Quarry .................................................................................................................... 200 9. Club ......................................................................................................................... 278 5 Preface I grew up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and in the late 1980s I came out as gay. It was during this time that I developed an interest in the theatre and writing plays. My first full length play explored the complexities of coming out in Northern Ireland, and the resistance and homophobia experienced by my main protagonist. The play was well received and had a staged reading at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Despite my appetite for queer stories, in particular queer plays, the theatre venues I visited and the plays they staged lacked these representations. This frustrated me as a young gay playwright: I felt alone in my drive to give voice to the queer experience of the Troubles. Within this PhD I have created a body of work, three stage plays, that explore the queer experience during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. My intention is to dramatize the queer narrative of the Troubles, something that should have happened at the time. As I embarked on writing my plays, I also researched plays that were written during the period of the Troubles by Northern Irish writers, and that contain queer identities. There are four plays in my study, The Gentle Island by Brian Friel, Crack Up by Martin Lynch, Ecce Homo by Joe Reid and Belfast Community Theatre and Carthaginians by Frank McGuinness: four very different plays, written at different times throughout the 29 years of the Troubles. There is significant disparity between the plays that I have written and the body of work that already exists. The most significant difference between the two is that my overall intention in writing my plays was to place the queer character firmly at the heart of the drama, and to have the action of the play revolve around queer experience. It was also important that there was a strong presence of the Troubles throughout the plays; in other words, a lot of the circumstances and action of the plays are driven by the events in the Troubles society. However, in all but one (Ecce Homo) of the plays that I have studied as part of my research, the queer experience is not the dramatic