Other Spaces (Non-theatre spaces)

This chapter investigates performance staged in non-traditional spaces from the mid-to-late twentieth through to the early twenty-first century in Irish theatre. I focus on two major strands of practice: contemporary street arts (the Diceman, Macnas) and site-specific/site-responsive theatre (Performance Corporation, Company S/J, ANU). The staging of Irish theatre in non-theatre spaces could be traced back to William Butler Yeats’s staging of his Nôh plays for dancers in private quarters in the early twentieth century in London. But the two aesthetic methodologies covered by this chapter use the dialectic amongst audience, performance and space to call into question the meaning and efficacy of performance as a shared social event in Ireland today. The development of many of these companies within regional contexts—including Galway, Waterford and Cork, as well as Dublin—testifies to the relationship between theatre staged in non-traditional spaces and the commitment of artists working in this way to using performance to transform audiences’ relationships to the local.