Theatre is a space where identity can be explored in a way not afforded to many LGBT+ people in the prescribed roles of everyday life. By adopting a different role, identity can be teased out, reinvestigated, and brought to life in a new way. Theatre is a medium in which writers, actors, and audiences collaborate, to navigate and create new understandings of identity. Irish theatre is steadily discarding outdated conceptions of what can or cannot be staged and could be entering a golden age of exploration, creativity, and diverse representation. Indeed, Brian Merriman, the founder of the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, called Dublin “the centre of gay theatre in the world.” But does Dublin really live up to this accolade?
Taking well-known stories and rewriting them to include an LGBT+ element has become increasingly popular in Irish theatre. At the 2016 Dublin Fringe Festival, an adaptation of The Aeneid featured a romantic relationship between two women. The Abbey Theatre’s 2016 production of The Seagull, a modernised version of Anton Chekhov’s 1896 play of the same name, reimagined the originally male Konstantin as Constance (Jane McGrath), exploring a lesbian relationship with Nina (Genevieve Hulme-Beaman).A devilishly comedic adaptation of Little Women written by Teri Fitzgerald for Smock Alley theatre in 2016 called The Wise Wound refashioned Jo (Clodagh Mooney Duggan) as a lesbian. The show predominantly focused on Meg’s (Ashleigh Dorrell) marriage plot, but as the newlyweds kissed front and centre in the closing scene, Jo and her girlfriend shared a private kiss to the side as the lights dimmed. This was the first play featuring a kiss between two women on stage I’d ever seen. It was a powerful moment of positive representation, but I was also struck by its rarity, by how this was a type of story so infrequently told – and when told, told on the sidelines. As charming and innovative as these retelling plays are, one has to wonder: do these plays succeed because they can fall back on their familiar, established nature, rather than pushing the boundaries? Is Irish theatre open to telling new and original LGBT+ stories?
The optimistic answer to the latter is yes. LGBT+ themes are increasingly prevalent in Dublin theatre, and though original LGBT+ works still constitute a minority of plays that make it into production, they have been gaining traction in recent years. In 2018, The Project Arts Centre has so far championed original LGBT+ work. Stacey Gregg’s Scorch delved into gender dynamics with the story of gender-curious teenager Kes (Amy McAllister) and John O’Donovan’s If We Had Some More Cocaine, I Could Show You How I Love You explored the interracial relationship between two young men (Alan Mahon, Josh Williams) in County Clare. Murder of Crows, which premiered at Theatre Upstairs on Eden Quay in 2016 and played again at the Project Arts Centre in February 2018, features a cast of three women and engages with the uncertainty of sexuality during adolescence. During the 2017 Fringe Festival, Dublin Youth Theatre – a company for creators aged 14-22 – presented this is a room, an ensemble piece which follows several young people’s lives and touched on the particular excitement for a young gay person of moving away from home to go to university and all the potential which accompanies it. Indeed, Dublin Youth Theatre’s no stranger to exploring diverse themes. Their 2015 production of Show Me Love tackled similar subjects to this is a room and featured a transgender teenager coming out and transitioning. It seems the Irish theatre scene is quickly catching up to the idea that we are more conscious of diversity as something which is as deserving of celebration and of sexual orientation as a prominent part of people’s lives.
The recent growth in LGBT+ theatre is especially welcome given Ireland’s history of censorship and homophobia. In 1895, Irish author, poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labour and imprisoned for “gross indecency” in England, and things weren’t great at home, either: in In 1929, the Censorship of Publications Act in 1929, although imposing upon books and periodicals more so than theatre, allowed for the banning of work which promoted ‘unwholesome foreign influences’ or which was deemed to pose a threat to the nuclear family (sound familiar?). In 1950, English writer Robert Graves described Ireland’s censorship laws as “the fiercest literary censorship this side of the Iron Curtain.” As recently as 2014, national broadcaster RTÉ redacted comments made by performer and gay activist Rory O’Neill on the Saturday Night Show on defining homophobia in Ireland. Additionally, RTE offered an apology in newspapers on the following Sunday and paid out over €80,000 to members of the Iona Institute Catholic lobbying group over complaints made about O’Neill’s discussion. Although censorship laws are not what they used to be, it is vital that we empower marginalised voices in the LGBT+ community to ensure that Irish theatre can tell diverse stories without fear of silencing or reprimand.
Despite significant progress, there are still discursive tropes that could potentially hurt the efforts of LGBT+ theatre. At a recent post-show discussion in Dublin, several leading artists in Irish theatre were asked if their writing is impacted by the surrounding political climate in which it exists. All answered in the negative, asserting that their writing came from somewhere ‘organic’. The sentiment was that if their work happened to resound with current issues, all the better, but that attempting to write directly on or in the name of such subjects would somehow pollute their work or render it ingenuine. At this point, it seems useful to note that four out of five panel members were middle-aged white men.
This narrative carries the implication that a justifiable hierarchy can be constructed in theatre. It suggests that writing which deliberately delves its teeth into real-world issues is in some way less authentic than ostensibly objective texts, an idea disproportionately hurts minority communities. LGBT+ theatre often explores issues which are systematically ignored on political platforms. While Ronald Reagan point-blank refused to acknowledge the existence of the AIDS crisis, Larry Kramer’s 1985 play The Normal Heart, a story on the rise of the HIV-AIDs crisis, became the longest running show at the Public Theatre in New York City (where Hamilton first played on Broadway). To suggest that a prerequisite for ‘legitimate’ theatre is that it comes from some mystical internal rumination, rather than being influenced by the real world, risks silencing the creative voices of those who write to reflect and highlight their experiences.
That being said, LGBT+ productions should not be burdened with an inherent responsibility to comment or educate simply because of their subject matter. We cannot expect LGBT+ writers, directors, or actors specifically to cast aside their craft and become teachers masquerading as creators. Theatre can be a wonderful medium through which to educate, because its method of storytelling comes with a tangibility and urgency that often surpasses other forms of media, but LGBT+ art should be also allowed to be art for art’s sake. To place a high degree of expectation on LGBT+ theatre to have a moral, spread a message, or single-handedly evoke social change while allowing heteronormative modes of theatre to explore itself as a piece of art, rather than a textbook or sermon, is to fall into a trap.
2004 marked a turning point for LGBT+ theatre in Ireland with the advent of the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. The festival has grown to become the largest event of its type globally and features new or recent Irish and international work. It seeks to create “new opportunities for visibility and affirmation for existing and emerging gay artists and theatrical works.” The criteria are broad – the Festival includes works by gay writers, with a gay relevance or theme, or which include performance or another artistic contribution by LGBT+ people. Last year’s highlights included shows like Wasting Paper, which won the Festival’s Oscar Wilde Award for Best New Writing, and Montparnasse, the story of a model and an artist in 1920s’ Paris. This year’s festival is running between Monday, 7 May and Sunday, 20 May, and we hope will deliver the high-quality content the Festival has become known for.
It’s an exciting time for LGBT+ theatre in Ireland – despite barriers, more and more plays are emerging which give the spotlight to LGBT+ characters and stories that reflect real world experiences and concerns. LGBT+ stories deserve to be told, and the theatre is a powerful place to do so.
