New Century Theatre Companies: From Dramatist to Collective

Abstract

Since the turn of the new millennium, Irish theatre has been undergoing a renaissance in terms of moving away from Ibsenite dramatic narratives and into more radical performance structures and theatrical forms. This renaissance is spearheaded by a small but ever-growing cohort of theatre-making collectives, all of which were founded in the last seventeen years and can be thus identified as “New Century” theatre companies. This chapter provides a critical survey of five New Century Irish theatre companies—Talking Shop Ensemble, WillFredd, Brokentalkers, Dead Centre and THISISPOPBABY—interrogating the ways in which their dramaturgical strategies and rehearsal and performance practices make comment on Irish identities and the state of the nation.

To be sure, like the dramatists before them, these companies have the state of the nation and Irishness as central concerns, yet unlike their predecessors they create ensemble works that not only eschew over-reliance on a central text, but also make strange the familiar structures of narrative drama that have long been entrenched. Bound up with this new-millennium thrust towards more total theatre experiences is a decentring of the role of the dramatist, as New Century companies endeavour to both speak and respond to an ever-changing Ireland in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Yet, while they might disregard the traditional role of the singular playwright as storyteller, they still tell stories: stories of less visible communities and those marginalized by mainstream society.