Spatializing the Everyday in Post-Troubles Northern Ireland: Owen McCafferty’s Scenes from the Big Picture

Abstract

Post-Troubles theatre in Northern Ireland has witnessed theatrical projects that push Belfast beyond its unenviable position as the predominant spatial imaginary of the Northern Ireland conflict. Informed by Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault, this paper analyzes the spatialization of the everyday in post-Troubles Belfast in Scenes from the Big Picture (2003) by Belfast playwright Owen McCafferty. McCafferty prioritizes the ordinary over the traumatic. His dramatic project consists in re-imagining the quotidian space in which ordinary citizens of Belfast tactically endeavor to constitute their own spaces. McCafferty challenges the “given-ness” of quotidian space by offering a heterotopic conception of Belfast’s everyday space in which heterogeneous spatial practices are rearranged and juxtaposed to reveal the counter-sites of the everyday. In the play, the daunting parameters of the everyday space are delimited and controlled by a taciturn old city walker whose subdued presence leaves its traces to demarcate the contour of the quotidian space. Major issues addressed in the paper include the play’s relationship to and position in post-Troubles theatre, its thematic and experiential prioritization of the everyday, and its formal and linguistic features that enable the dramatization of everyday life in Belfast. McCafferty presents a “big” picture of Belfast, bigger than the Troubles, by staging those ordinary individuals whose lives are deeply affected but not determined by sectarian violence.