Performing Cultural Memory: The Travelling Hibernicon and the Transnational Irish Community in the United States and Australia

Abstract

The proliferation of popular touring companies in the late nineteenth century provides an opportunity to explore how popular ideas of Irishness travelled and transformed across national borders. Through its international reach and unique form, the hibernicon — an Irish variation on the moving panorama — had the potential to create an imagined collectivity among Irish emigrants and their descendants in the US and Australia. Looking at the hibernicon and transnational theatre emphasises the ways that performances of cultural memory shift over time and are dependent not only on the relationship of the Irish to homeland, but also the transnational relationships among those who have left. The hibernicon highlights the crucial role popular entertainment played in conversations about cultural memory and demonstrates the importance of transnationalism in cultural memory's formation.