Dan Baron Cohen: Resistance to Liberation with Derry Frontline Culture and Education

Abstract

This interview with Dan Baron Cohen was conducted in Derry City Center in December 1992 as research for a book dealing with theatre and political conflict in the North of Ireland (Pilkington forthcoming). While much of this book will concern published drama written for mainstream theatres, I also document the existence of various forms of theatre practice associated with protest and resistance. My particular interest in Derry Frontline Culture and Education-with which Baron Cohen works as a coordinator and scriptwriter-arose from the group's radical difference from most contemporary Irish cultural organizations: its forthright opposition to British rule in the North of Ireland and its simultaneous and persistent questioning of some of the traditional nationalist beliefs upon which much of that opposition tends to be based. Derry Frontline operates primarily within the nationalist innercity communities of Derry's Creggan and Bogside, where Baron Cohen has lived and worked for the past five years. Founded in 1988 following a collaboration between cultural activists from Manchester and Derry,' the group is not affiliated with any political party and involves the participation of people from a variety of political and religious backgrounds. Since 1988, Derry Frontline has been involved in various cultural activities including the production of two theatre pieces: Inside Out (I988)-a drama/sculpture collaboration which links the issues of abortion and armed resistance-and Time Will Tell (I989), a play which explores issues of Ulster loyalism, gay identity, and domestic violence. The group's 1992 project, Threshold, is based on 50 interviews, various visual arts projects (such as banner making, wall murals, and graffiti) and improvisations arising from Augusto Boal's techniques of forum and invisible theatre. The Threshold project extended over two years and throughout its span was entirely contingent on the narratives and histo-