Abstract

Theatre, Performance and Design: Scenographies in a Modernizing Ireland contributes to international scholarship in two key ways. Firstly, it proposes recently expanded understandings of scenography as frameworks for uncovering more holistic theatre and performance histories, providing a model for further-reaching genealogies of contemporary practice. Secondly, it contributes to the global field of Irish Studies by offering the first major study of scenography in relation to Irish theatre, a field in which literary critiques have, until recently, dominated historiography. As such, it satisfies an urgent need to account for Irish theatre and performance design, in addition to addressing gaps in the histories and theories of scenography more broadly. Theatre, Performance and Design acknowledges both the usefulness of broader understandings of scenography and the need to articulate its methodological distinctiveness. While it sees theatre, performance and design as distinctive but sometimes overlapping material embodied practices, it positions scenographies as conceptions of space, visuals, sounds, bodies and materials arranged for public performance – as ways of looking as well as a broader but varying collections of collaborative practices.