Synopses & Reviews
In the expansive and expanding field of Irish studies, performance has typically featured as drama, theatre, dance and music. Yet the categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are highly performative, effected through a wide range of social practices, cultural formations, discursive utterances, and in timely need of critical address. As social and political change continue to have enormous effects on Ireland and its diaspora, it has become more important than ever to engage with performances in and of Irish culture.
This new paperback edition of Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture examines Irish culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies. As the title of the book makes clear, Brady and Walsh return to the evocative metaphor of crossroads to signal the intersection of disciplines. The roads mapped here are metaphorical and real, multiple and mobile. Practices, epistemologies, temporalities, geographies, and identities splinter in their wake, clearing the ground for the emergence of nuanced understandings of performance and cultural politics.
Review
"Recommended." —CHOICE
Review
"This volume of essays forms a rich beginning for the development of Irish performance studies." - Aoife Monks, TDR: The Drama Review
"This book has the energy and excitement of a newly discovered mine of research, that of Irish performance studies. Interdisciplinary and eclectic in scope, the collection analyzes past and contemporary performances of Irish culture. The lens of performance studies presents Irish identities and traditions in the making, at once historically located and continually changing in the light of contemporary interpretations, conditions and urgencies. This collection offers striking juxtapositions and theoretical frameworks which offer new insights into the making of Irish culture - past and present." - Professor Anna McMullan, University of Reading, UK
"This is a groundbreaking collection that brings together some of the most important scholars in the area of Performance Studies in Ireland, and [...] has helped in no small part to galvanise that field and the broader field of Irish Studies. " Anne Muhall, University College Dublin, Ireland
"An engrossing, lively, timely, and important collection. The editors have chosen well - the book enriches our understanding of Ireland across a broad range of cultural activities. The essays exemplify, probe, illuminate, and analyze the very rich performative landscape of Ireland. This book opens up new vistas to scholars of performance studies and Irish studies - and to anyone else wanting to learn more about the ebullient action of Irish culture." Richard Schechner, New York University, USA
"The evocative metaphor of crossroads provides both a title and a theme for this collection of essays on cultural performances. Exploding the hermetic discipline of Irish studies - which has primarily confined itself to post-colonial discourse in the last one hundred years - the wide-ranging contributors to this expansive volume apply the logic of performance studies to a variety of cultural and social performances, from parades to political speeches, from pilgrimages to beauty pageants, and, of course, the theatre…an important new reader in Irish theatre studies." - Sara Keating, Irish Theatre Magazine
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Performance Studies and Irish Culture; F.Walsh with S.Brady PART I: TRADITION, RITUAL AND PLAY Performing Ireland: A Performative Approach to the Study of Irish Culture; J.Santino Performing Tradition; B.Sweeney Sporting 'Irish' Identities: Performance and the Gaelic Games; S.Brady 'It's beyond Candide it's Svejk': Wise Foolery in the Work of Jack Lynch, Storyteller; M.Wilson Traditional Irish Music in the 21st Century: Networks, Technology, and the Negotiation of Authenticity; S.Spencer PART II: PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND COMMEMORATION 'Tapping Secrecies of Stone': Irish Roads as Performances of Movement, Measurement, and Memory; J.Morrison Commemoration and the Performance of Irish Famine Memory; E.M.FitzGerald Embodying the Past for the Tourist Gaze: Performing History and Commemorations of Violence at Free Derry Corner; M.Spangler St Patrick's Purgatory and the Performance of Pilgrimage; D.Cregan PART III: POLITICAL PERFORMANCES Word, Voice, Book, and Act: De Valera and the Oath; A.Pulju Between the Living and the Dead: Performative 'in-betweens' in the Work of Alastair MacLennan; C.Szab The Bio-politics of Performing Irish-ness; M.Causey PART IV: GENDER, FEMINISM, AND QUEER PERFORMANCE Ghosting Bridgie Cleary: Tom Mac Intyre and Staging this Woman's Death; C.McIvor Challenging Patriarchal Imagery: Amanda Coogan's Performance Art; G.C.Novati Homelysexuality and the 'Beauty' Pageant; F.Walsh PART V: DIASPORA, MIGRATION, GLOBALIZATION Taking Northern Irish Identity on the Road: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival of 2007; E.Moore Quinn Who's Laughing at What?: Currents of Humour in African-Irish Theatre; E.Weitz Parading Multicultural Ireland: Identity Politics and National Agendas in the 2007 St Patrick's Festival; H.Maples Index
Synopsis
This book is a wide-ranging critical analysis of cultural performance in Ireland, placing it within the interdisciplinary field of Performance Studies for the first time. These timely and original essays offer a sustained critique of diverse modes of Irishness and Irish culture as performative.
About the Author
Sara Brady is Assistant Professor at the City University of New York, USA. She is the author of Performance, Politics, and the War on Terror: 'Whatever It Takes' (2012) and media editor of Performance Studies: An Introduction, 3rd edition by Richard Schechner (2013).
Fintan Walsh is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. He is the author of Theatre and Therapy (Palgrave, 2013) and Male Trouble: Masculinity and the Performance of Crisis (Palgrave, 2010). He is an editor of numerous collections including 'That Was Us': Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (2013), Queer Notions: New Plays and Performances from Ireland (2010), and the co-edited volume Performance, Identity, and the Neo-Political Subject (2013).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Preface to the Paperback Edition
1. Introduction: Performance Studies and Irish Culture; F.Walsh with S.Brady
PART I: TRADITION, RITUAL AND PLAY
2. Performing Ireland: A Performative Approach to the Study of Irish Culture; J.Santino
3. Performing Tradition; B.Sweeney
4. Sporting 'Irish' Identities: Performance and the Gaelic Games; S.Brady
5. 'It's beyond Candide it's Švejk': Wise Foolery in the Work of Jack Lynch, Storyteller; M.Wilson
6. Traditional Irish Music in the 21st Century: Networks, Technology, and the Negotiation of Authenticity; S.Spencer
PART II: PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND COMMEMORATION
7. 'Tapping Secrecies of Stone': Irish Roads as Performances of Movement, Measurement, and Memory; J.Morrison
8. Commemoration and the Performance of Irish Famine Memory; E.M.FitzGerald
9. Embodying the Past for the Tourist Gaze: Performing History and Commemorations of Violence at Free Derry Corner; M.Spangler
10. St Patrick's Purgatory and the Performance of Pilgrimage; D.Cregan
PART III: POLITICAL PERFORMANCES
11. Word, Voice, Book, and Act: De Valera and the Oath; A.Pulju
12. Between the Living and the Dead: Performative 'in-betweens' in the Work of Alastair MacLennan; C.Szabó
13. The Bio-politics of Performing Irish-ness; M.Causey
PART IV: GENDER, FEMINISM, AND QUEER PERFORMANCE
14. Ghosting Bridgie Cleary: Tom Mac Intyre and Staging this Woman's Death; C.McIvor
15. Challenging Patriarchal Imagery: Amanda Coogan's Performance Art; G.C.Novati
16. Homelysexuality and the 'Beauty' Pageant; F.Walsh
PART V: DIASPORA, MIGRATION, GLOBALIZATION
17. Taking Northern Irish Identity on the Road: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival of 2007; E.Moore Quinn
18. Who's Laughing at What?: Currents of Humour in African-Irish Theatre; E.Weitz
19. Parading Multicultural Ireland: Identity Politics and National Agendas in the 2007 St Patrick's Festival; H.Maples
Index