Emer O'Toole, Assistant Professor of Irish Performance Studies, Concordia University
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Abstract: In 2016, to commemorate the centenary of the declaration of the Irish Republic, The Abbey Theatre announced a programme comprised of 90% male playwrights. The scale of the feminist reaction to this event is, in part, due the history of the theatre and how it intertwines with the history of the Irish nation. While Waking the Feminists is about the position of women in the Irish arts, it also serves, symbolically, as reflection on woman and nation in a wider sense. Waking the Feminists happened at the same time as the implementation of a new political quota system. It happened at a time when the campaign to repeal the 8th amendment, Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion, was in full swing. Waking the Feminists came, in short, at a time when Irish women are demanding greater rights and representation on social and political stages. And, as any of us involved in feminist movement can attest, those moments create a backlash, from both left and right of the political sphere. Conservative factions obviously react negatively to gender quotas, abortion rights and lady playwrights, but critique from the left can be more insidious, positioning gender equality as a consideration secondary to the bigger picture of, for example, anti-austerity politics. By similar logic, the ideal of artistic merit must be safeguarded above and beyond any “politically correct” agenda of female inclusion. For this seminar we’ll read texts from the feminist writers of 1916 that illustrate the longevity of such debates. With an activist eye, we’ll attempt to name some strategies and lines of argumentation required by Ireland’s Waking the Feminist movement, and by feminist movements more broadly, as we work towards equality in the arts and in society.
