Introduction: Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland

Abstract

Weaving my way through Bloomsbury on 2 February 2014, I’m glued to a performance at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, streaming from the iPhone in my hand. Drag performer Panti Bliss (Rory O’Neill) is delivering a speech about homophobia on the main stage of Ireland’s national theatre, following a production of James Plunkett’s play The Risen People (1958).1 Surrounded by the cast, Panti has us imagine that we are standing at a pedestrian crossing being judged or threatened, as I curl my way towards Euston Station. While the theatre performance took place on 1 February, I’m watching it a day later as a YouTube clip shared on Twitter. Taking the bus home towards Hackney, I chat online with friends about the performance we have just seen, as if we are leaving the theatre together. Soon I’m communicating with people around the world. As a gay Irish man recently living in London, I feel strangely at home in this eddy of global exchange – proud, moved, encouraged – bobbing somewhere between the Abbey Theatre, the smart-phone in my hand, and a bus journey eastwards. Panti’s performance, and its reception, make me feel a powerful sense of being a part of something important and vitalising – though of what, and just how this has happened, are not immediately clear.