Agonistic Spaces: Dissensus and Ethical Conflicts in Recent Irish Theatre

Abstract

This chapter explores agonistic encounters in Irish theatre. Positioning its discussion in relation to the wider Irish theatre context in the first decades of the twenty-first century, the chapter foregrounds three recent theatrical works: This Beautiful Village by Lisa Tierney-Keogh (2019, 2020), Home: Part One collectively created at the Abbey Theatre (2021) and The Saviour by Deirdre Kinahan (2021, 2023) as striking examples of the diverse ways current Irish theatre performs dissensual speech. The chapter highlights these works as embedded in and speaking to the socio-political environment of contemporary Ireland, while at the same time acknowledging the ways their reach was extended by their availability in online formats. The discussion draws on Jacques Rancière's notion of dissensus as 'a division inserted in "common sense": a dispute over what is given and about the frame within which we see something as given' (Rancière 2013, 69), alongside reflections on agonism in performance from Tony Fisher and Eve Katsouraki's 2017 edited volume, Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance and Radical Democracy and the work of political theorist Chantal Mouffe. In a twenty-first century moment marked by extraordinary social transformation, these works, I will argue, suggest the complex contours not only of Irish public discourse, but also of the role of theatre as a space of critically meaningful agonism.