Violence against women in Northern Irish theatre, since the end of the conflict.

What is it about?

This document explores the representation of sexual and domestic violence in Northern Ireland, in the public forum of the theatre, during the years immediately preceding the 1994 Ceasefire and following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. There are many and various representations of sexual and domestic violence in the work of playwrights like Anne Devlin, Christina Reid, and Derry Frontline; and later in the work of Daragh Carville, Abbie Spallen, Patricia Byrne, and in Arts Council funded theatre companies like Kabosh and Big Telly Theatre Company. Drawing upon the definition of performance offered by Richard Schechner as an inclusive term that incorporates a wide range of human activity from theatre to ritual and the performance of everyday life to sports, the arts, ceremonies and ‘performances of great magnitude’, this essay progresses from the assumption that these theatrical representations reflect aspects of the social world. In this instance I am particularly concerned with the performance of gender and gender relationships in the social world, and the ways in which the political and civil conflict in Northern Ireland have inflected local everyday performances of gender identity, influencing attitudes to interpersonal violence and, in particular, violence against women.

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Why is it important?

The essay explores an aspect of the conflict in Northern Ireland that is often ignored: the experiences of the women in the population. Research on conflict repeatedly shows that the security of women and their children becomes precarious in both public and private (domestic) spaces (Johnson, 1995: Meintjes et al, 2001; Read-Hamilton et al, 2016). This essay traces the representation of gendered forms of violence on the Northern Irish stage and its relationship to its social context of sectarian conflict, civil violence, and the marginalization of women in public life.

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