Reframing the politics of performance at 14 Henrietta Street: ANU’s Living the Lockout and Company SJ’s Fizzles

ABSTRACT

The recent shift towards site-specific performance in Ireland brings to the fore the role of distance in a theatre culture long structured around the spatial divisions of the proscenium. This essay uses theories of space and haunting to examine the ways in which two Irish theatre companies, ANU Productions and Company SJ, negotiate the ghostly presence of Sean O’Casey’s dramaturgy within a former tenement building, Dublin’s 14 Henrietta Street. Through performance analysis, the essay shows how these companies pose afresh questions about Irish history and bring to light the role of distance in the politics of performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Ireland
• theatre
• distance
• ANU Productions
• Company SJ

Acknowledgements

Work on this essay was supported by the European Regional Development Fund Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is likely Yeats told Synge this not, as he claims, at their first meeting, but “at a later meeting in 1899 after Synge had already been to Aran and was deciding whether to concentrate on writing about his experiences there or to continue with his literary studies in Paris” (Grene and Little).

2 As experienced by this author during ANU Productions’ Faultline (2019). Underlining the shift from auditorium to the street as a key dynamic in Irish theatre practice, Faultline was a co-production with the Gate Theatre held not in the theatre itself, but in a nearby Georgian building on Parnell Square.

3 “S[amuel ]B[eckett] ticked the productions that he could remember seeing at the Abbey Theatre between 1923 and 1927 on a letter from John McCormick to J[ames ]K[nowlson], 7 Oct. 1970” (Knowlson 716 n. 55).

4 Dates in parentheses after prose works denote first publication. Where the work was first published in a language other than English, the original title is given in parentheses.

5 The recording of Living the Lockout can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWAYC-fZwdw. All citations of the play are taken from this video.

6 As Yeates points out, the rates in the suburbs remained lower than those in the city in spite of this devaluation.

7 This was out of a total population of 304,802 in Dublin city, recorded in the 1911 census (Central Statistics Office).

8 I attended Glorious Madness at 3pm on 4 July 2015.

9 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer from Text and Performance Quarterly for sharing this phrase with me.

10 This is in contrast to Rough for Theatre I, which Beckett sets explicitly on a “street corner” (Complete Dramatic Works 227).

Additional information

Funding

Work on this essay was supported by the European Regional Development Fund Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).