“A Bevy of Beauties”: Feminism, Double Jeopardy, and Charabanc Theatre Company

This chapter interrogates the relationship between second-wave feminism and feminist performance practice through an examination of how the creation and early plays of Belfast-based Charabanc Theatre Company in the 1980s reflected the strategies of Anglo-American feminism, proliferating on the island of Ireland at that time. This analysis considers how the ongoing conflict of the Troubles informed, influenced, and hampered feminist progress in the north of Ireland, leading to a “double-jeopardy” of discrimination against women in the north at that time. This chapter argues that Charabanc's cross-community approach and collaborative devised creation structures echoed second-wave feminist methodologies by raising the consciousness around women's lived experiences. This chapter seeks to rectify the lacuna of scholarship about women's devised performance practice in the 1980s through an analysis of the company's influence on performance practice in the north and across the island of Ireland from the 1980s onwards.