Bedbound Beauty Queens: Negotiating Space and Gender in Contemporary Irish Drama

Abstract

As concepts of nation and national identity are more and more being questioned in the globalised and transcultural environment of contemporary Ireland, the creative and imaginative potential of drama and theatre takes up a crucial position. The performative quality of drama and its theatrical realisation on the stage allows the genre to constantly oscillate between the imagined spaces and places of the text and the real, social, cultural and political spaces and places of its production and reception. Thus, a critical assessment of how theatre and drama imagines and playfully manipulates what it means to be "male" and "female" in a society that has experienced such tremendous economic, social and cultural transformations in the last decade as Ireland can also productively contribute to the necessary discussions of Irish identity in the 21st century.