Performing Modernity
Culture and Experiment in the Irish Free State
Performing Modernity
Culture and Experiment in the Irish Free State
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Description
This book is an exploration of metropolitan bohemian and counter-cultural movements in theatre, design and popular culture in the Irish Free State.
Were there flappers in Ireland? Was there really a Cabaret Club in Dublin in 1926? Using photographs, theatre and costume designs, letters, newspaper accounts, novels and other historical sources, Performing Modernity?offers a wholly new perspective on metropolitan life in the Irish Free State where people listen to jazz and go dancing, watch German Expressionist theatre, are interested in Soviet design, and attend pageants, cabarets and fancy dress balls.
The early years of Irish independence are often characterised as isolated and conservative as the country recovered from the effects of the Civil War. This book argues that there was also ambition and optimism among the citizens of the new State as they embraced the promise of modernity in theatre, film and popular culture during the 1920s and 1930s.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Experimental Theatre and the New State: The Dublin Drama League, the Peacock Theatre to the Beginnings of the Gate Theatre Studio (1919-1928)
2. Radicals and Cabarets: Toto Bannard Cogley's Counter-cultural Networks (1924-1930)
3. Continental Stagecraft: Visual Style, Stage Design and Modernism
4. MacLiammóir as Costume Designer: Performing Sexual Identities at the Gate Theatre
5. Fashion, Performance and American Popular Culture (1927-1937)
6. Bright Young People: Fancy Dress Balls and Social Identity
7. Narrating the State: Spectacle and Nation-Building (1926-1936)
Conclusion
References
Index
Product details
| Published | Jan 22 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 272 |
| ISBN | 9781350258075 |
| Imprint | Methuen Drama |
| Illustrations | 26 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Series | Cultural Histories of Theatre and Performance |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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