Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates how the Troubles and subsequent Peace Process, Second-Wave Feminism, the Celtic Tiger and neoliberalism, social revolution, and the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the form and function of performance practice across the island of Ireland. It interrogates how, in the north of Ireland, performance practitioners intervened to “break the rules” of public space in Belfast to represent the reality of everyday life post-Good Friday Agreement. The book then examines the role that dark tourism plays in framing and performing an outward perspective of the north of Ireland. It also interrogates the relationship between second-wave feminism and feminist performance practice. The book demonstrates how theatre and performance practice from the 2010s echoed an emerging tendency across Irish society to present, expose, and witness history in the aftermath of a series of scandals that emerged across Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century.