Long flame in the hideous gale: The politics of Irish popular performance 1950-2000

Abstract

This chapter traces ideas of popular performance as a political art form across the last half of the twentieth century, through the lens of independent theatre and the community arts sectors in Ireland. The chapter fuses the two sectors temporarily as an “ideological hybrid” in order to connect ideas of popular theatre to the performance work of both—as “flashpoints” or key moments from the 1970s on to the turn of the century. The work interrogates those theatre and performance flashpoints as counter or alternative narratives to the dominant political and cultural coda of the time. The chapter concludes with a return to the discussion on the politics of popular theatre and to the cultural and political significance of the performance work produced through both sectors in recent Irish theatre history.