Synopsis:

From 1968 to 1998, Northern Ireland experienced an ethno-nationalist conflict referred to as “The Troubles,” the violence of which can still be felt in many communities to this day. This conflict inspired an outpouring of plays that sought to comprehend The Troubles through the medium of theater, resulting in works with immediate political impact.

 

A Brief History of Irish Theater:

The history of theater in Ireland and Northern Ireland is closely tied to the country’s political and economic history. ¹ Irish theater emerged as a significant art form in the 17th century with the rise of the English administration in Dublin. Early Irish dramas tended to serve government purposes, and plays often provided political commentary. ² Irish dramatists rose to wider recognition during the 18th century when Ireland flourished economically and maintained a relatively strong position within the British Isles. During this time, playwrights such as Richard Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith enjoyed significant commercial success both in Dublin as well as London. The second half of the 19th century is arguably considered the golden age of Irish theater with the success of playwrights such as Dion Boucicault, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, whose plays are still widely performed today. With the strive for independence in the early 20th century, Irish theater became sharply political with playwrights often writing in both Irish and English languages. ¹

The first records of theater in the north of Ireland date from 1736 with the visit of Dublin’s Smock Alley troupe to Belfast and Newry. Theater in the area was extremely popular in the 18th century, as it was an important factor in urban social life. Organizations often used theater as a means for social and political expression. Close connections between Belfast and London ensured that plays popular in London were often also performed in Belfast. However, with the tension and violence of the 1790’s as a result of the 1789 Rising, an unsuccessful rebellion against British colonial rule, all theatrical performances were suspended in 1793. The monied classes abandoned theater, as it had increasingly become a place of political tensions and one associated with sinfulness. In the early 19th century, riots in theaters were widespread, and the art form struggled to win back popular support. Companies began to travel around the country and create a network of troupes and theaters that would last into the 20th century. ³

 

The Troubles:

While there had been political and social turmoil in the region for a long time, the tensions came to a head in 1968. The Northern Ireland parliament had been dominated by unionists for over fifty years. Its attempts to solve social and political issues, such as the institutional discrimination against Catholics, were judged by both sides. This gave rise to growing tension and violence between the two communities, leading successive UK governments to intervene. In 1969, British troops were sent to help restore order, but by 1972 the conflict had escalated to the point that the British government suspended the Northern Ireland parliament and imposed direct rule from London. The Irish Republican Army, or the IRA, was uninterested in any solution short of complete British withdrawal and Irish unification. For them, the only option was the ‘long war’, a strategy that had been gaining traction and support since the introduction of imprisonment without trial in 1971 and the killing of 13 people by the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday in 1972. In response, the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) met republican paramilitaries with equal violence. ⁴

Attempts to solve this conflict through compromise and political action, such as the Sunningdale Agreement and the Aglo-Irish Agreement, collapsed due to the volatility of the situation as well as the mutual exclusivity of the visions both sides held for the future of Northern Ireland. However, in 1994 the IRA announced a ceasefire when mainstream republican and unionist leaders recognized that the conflict was unwinnable. Cross-party talks began in earnest in 1996, and United States President Bill Clinton took an active role appointing veteran US senator George Mitchell as chair of the talks process, which concluded in the Good Friday Agreement. ⁵ Ultimately, while tensions still exist between the two communities and many significant issues remain unresolved, the partnership of constitutional opposites is a remarkable outcome of the Troubles. The Good Friday Agreement contained proposals for a Northern Ireland Assembly with a power-sharing executive, new cross-border institutions with the Republic of Ireland, and a body linking devolved assemblies across the UK with Westminster and Dublin. The Republic of Ireland also agreed to drop its constitutional claim to Northern Ireland. While neither side was fully content with the outcome, war-weariness and disillusionment on the prospect of success led to their consent and ratification of the agreement. All signatories to the agreement endorsed the “consent principle,” which meant that any change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, such as Irish unification, would happen only if popular majorities voted in favor in separate referendums held at the same time on both sides of the border between communities. ⁴

 

Theatrical and Artistic Response:

With the surge of regional nationalism came the emergence of various theaters. One of these was the Ulster Literary Theater (ULT), founded in 1904. While the theater group eventually declined and disintegrated in the 1930s, it had a profound impact on theaters both of the day as well as those following its collapse. The ULT was the first theater company to put on stage characters that were ordinary Ulster citizens. It set an enduring pattern of theaters working to articulate an artistic and political line by presenting its society’s own way of being. While initially influenced by nationalist propagandist aims, the company’s emphasis increasingly fell on the social realities around it. This set it apart from theaters in the past, and its decline inspired the creation of new theater companies, such as the Belfast Reparatory Theater Company, Ulster Group Theater, and eventually the Lyric Players Theater, and influenced how these new companies portrayed social and political realities. Theater was a home for popular entertainment until the latest spate of The Troubles began.⁶

During the early, particularly brutal disturbances in Belfast, every theater in the city except the Lyric went dark. Companies that attempted to show plays with overtly political themes collapsed due to thinly disguised state censorship. Since so few new plays with strong political ideology had been staged in the decades leading up to the newest surge of The Troubles, Ulster theater groups approached the 1970’s with very little experience directly representing the political life of their communities. In the 70’s and 80’s, the Lyric staged plays by writers such as John Boyd, Patrick Galvin, Christina Reid,  Stewart Parker, and Martin Lynch which directly addressed the socio-political realities around them. In the 1980s, other companies began to do the same. In this way, theater worked as a means by which to both represent the socio-political reality of the Troubles as well as express political ideologies.⁶

Two prominent playwrights who attempted to capture the perspective of ordinary citizens were Brian Friel, who wrote The Freedom of the City, and that of Christina Reid, who wrote Joyriders. These two playwrights give a glimpse into the Catholic and Protestant perspectives, respectively. Brian Friel’s work is in response to the events of Bloody Sunday, in which three Catholics were shot after seeking shelter in the mayor’s office in the aftermath of a protest. Through this play, he humanizes and gives voice to the lower-class, specifically Catholics, who are often excluded from the narrative. Similarly, Christina Reid works to highlight experiences of members of the Protestant community who are often overlooked. Her work Joyriders focuses on the experiences of four teenagers who are trying to find work amidst the conflict. Her plays focus primarily on the experiences of women, young people, and Protestants, thus bringing a different perspective to the stage. By examining plays from both the Catholic and Protestant perspectives spanning class, age, and gender, one can see both the universality of the violence in those times as well as the means by which theater functions as a vehicle to question that violence.⁶

Brian Friel

Friel’s work The Freedom of the City (1973) is set in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1970, and examines the events and aftermath of Bloody Sunday, an event in which fourteen civil rights marchers died at the hands of a British regiment. His most overtly political work, The Freedom of the City is read as a response primarily to the Widgery Report drawn up after Bloody Sunday, which cited the cause of the confrontation to be the revolutionary speeches that supposedly riled up the population and launched it against security forces who had no choice but to respond with violence. Friel witnessed the incident and followed the trial and subsequent report that exonerated those responsible for the deaths of the marchers. The play itself was originally conceived as a play about poverty and power relations between 18th century Irish peasants, but following the events of Bloody Sunday Friel transformed it into an examination and denunciation of the working methods of power.⁷

The play presents the audience with several different timelines: the events in Guildhall town council where three marchers seek refuge, the funeral and subsequent speeches interpreting what happened, and the trial and legal response to the events. The end of the play is evident from the beginning; the opening scene depicts the corpses of the three Catholics, suggesting to the audience that they will die at the hands of the British army and largely Protestant police force. This functions in such a way that the audience is prompted to question the meaning of the events, rather than wonder what will happen next.⁷ The audience is presented the three characters, Skinner, Lily, and Michael, who are depicted as regular, albeit poor, citizens, and not the terrorists later official voices make them out to be. In this way Friel forces the audience to question the validity of these voices and the source of their authority.

Further, Friel uses the character of Mr. Dodds, an American sociologist who uses the events and characters in order to analyze a culture of poverty. Each character represents a different archetype of this culture; the ending of his speech explains the death of all three representations of this social class by suggesting they are the victims in all conflicts because “they have, in fact, no future. They have only today. And if they fail to cope with today, the only certainty they have is death.” ⁸ The culture of poverty depicted is thus a consequence of the abuse exerted by power. This can be seen especially through the character of the judge, as it is evident from the beginning that his intention is to prove that everything had been a terrorist act, either long-planned or improvised. Similarly, the Baladeer manipulates facts in order to project a certain image of the nationalist movement. He uses the story of the three activists to bolster the nationalist cause, saying “we have their memory still to guide us; we have their courage to recall.” ⁸ This suggests they broke into the Guildhall to further the nationalist agenda, while the audience knows that rather they were simply seeking refuge. In this way Friel questions official voices and their attempts to confine individual experience within an accepted dogma despite being both physically and figuratively separated from that experience.⁹

Christina Reid

Joyriders (1986) is set in 1980’s Belfast and follows a group of four teenagers who are taking part in a Youth Training Programme, where they are meant to learn ‘helpful’ skills to aid them in finding employment at the end of the year.¹⁰ For these characters, it is difficult to not be cynical about a training scheme that seems little more than a way to keep them off the streets. This cynicism is a product of their volatile environment, and the play explores how young people build and nurture relationships with one another against the backdrop of 1980’s Belfast.¹¹

While most of the characters find that growing up surrounded by violence and crime renders them cynical and unable to imagine a more hopeful future for themselves, some of them sometimes dare to wish for greater things.¹⁰ Maureen, for example, is secretly pregnant with the child of a university student. After her friend Sandra mocks her swelling ankles, she imagines a better life for her and her baby, saying “We’re gonna live in an old house behind the university… and every day I’ll put you in your pram and wheel you round the Botanic Gardens… a proper pram… Silver Cross with big high wheels… and everybody’ll look at you, you’ll be that beautiful… your father’s dark eyes an’ your granny’s blonde hair…” ¹² Immediately after this she switches to reminiscing about her mother, suggesting a sort of comfort and safety in the past that juxtaposes the volatility of the present and uncertainty of the future, which hinges upon the unknown university student. While she claims “he loves me… I know he does… he said he did… and he’s a gentleman,” the pauses and continued justification suggests that part of her questions his sincerity.

Sandra, on the other hand, does not find comfort in the past. In a conversation with Arthur, she recalls how her mother married “a big child like [Arthur], and what did that get her? Eight kids, and twenty years of cooking, cleaning, and surviving off the grants and handouts” ¹² She criticizes Arthur for his “big plans that’ll come to nothing,” and claims that his dreams of fortune are pointless since the world will eventually steal it all back from him and eat him alive. Her outlook on life demonstrates the shifting values of a generation brought up in a culture of violence and hopelessness, and juxtaposes Maureen’s hopefulness which Sandra claims are “fantastical… fairy stories and silly daydreams, just like her mother before her” ¹² Sandra and Maureen, then, represent two vastly different outlooks on life that are both shaped and molded by the ever-present backdrop of the Troubles.

Joyriders was inspired by Reid’s visit to Youth Training Programmes and to the Divis Community Centre in Belfast, where she met with a group of women who wrote and performed songs about their lives. Many of these accounts subsequently found their way into her script. Overall critical response was largely positive; while some deemed the play sentimental, young people especially found its unusual focus on young, working-class lives particularly appealing. The Guardian lauded “the way it suggests the extent to which a new generation has grown up without hope, and has adjusted with grace and jauntiness to lives bounded by pessimism.” ¹³

Conclusions

Both Friel and Reid place characters who are often overlooked firmly center stage and examine the impact that the violence inflicted on and by their communities has on those individuals. By examining the works of these two playwrights, the all-encompassing nature of the conflict can be felt as the violence touches the lives of those from all walks of life. In this way, theatre functions as a mechanism by which to represent, examine, and criticize the state of society as well as to give voice to those who would otherwise be voiceless.

 

Works cited

1. “Dublin Theatre.” Dublin.info. http://www.dublin.info/theatre/. Accessed 18 April, 2018.
2. Roake, Geanie. “Irish Theater.” Ireland 101. https://www.ireland101.com/page/irish-theatre. Accessed 18 April, 2018.
3. “Theatre in Northern Ireland: Introducing Northern Ireland’s Theatre and its History.” Culture Northern Ireland. 21 April, 2006. http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/features/performing-arts/theatre-northern-ireland-1. Accessed 18 April, 2018.
4. “The Troubles: Thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, 1968-1998.” BBC History. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/troubles. Accessed 19 April, 2018.
5. “Good Friday Agreement.” BBC History. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/good_friday_agreement. Accessed 19 April 2018.
6. Ophelia Byrne, The Continnum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, ed. Colin Chambers (London, 2002). Accessed from Drama Online Library, 19 April 2018.
7. Costero, Maria Gavina. “The Freedom of the City, or How Reality Contaminates Art.” The Association for Scottish Literary Studies: Scottish Literature’s International Voice. 30 July 2012. https://asls.arts.gla.ac.uk/S77-Costero.html. Accessed 20 April 2018
8. Friel, Brian. Selected Plays. London: Faber and Faber, 1996 (1984). Including: Philadelphia, Here I Come! , The Freedom of the City, Living Quarters, Aristocrats, Faith Healer, and Translations
9. Winkler, Elizabeth. “Brian Friel’s ‘The Freedom of the City’: Historical Actuality And Dramatic Imagination.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. Vol. 7, No. 1. Jun, 1981, pp. 12-31.
10. Bluhm, Annika. The Theatre Arts Audition Book for Women. Routledge, 2013. pp. 10-11.
11. Carrigan, Christine. “Welcome home for playwright Christina Reid’s tragicomedy Joyriders.” Belfast Telegraph. 1 August 2017.
12. Reid, Christina. Joyriders & Tea in a China Cup. Methuen New Theatrescript (1986).
13. “Christina Reid.” Culture Northern Ireland. 23 August 2006. http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article/754/christina-reid. Accessed 22 April 2018.

Images:

1. Potter, Gary. Belfast City Skyline. 2011. Photo. Flickr. Accessed 22 April 2018.
2. The Long Walk. Uploaded 2006. Photo. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 22 April 2018.
3. Mural of Victims of Bloody Sunday. Uploaded 2007. Photo. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 22 April 2018.
4. Reed, Phillip. Mural from the Troubles. 2013. Photo. Flickr. Accessed 22 April 2018.