Abstract
‘The Monto Cycle’ was an award-winning tetralogy of performances (2010–14) by ANU Productions that operated at the intersection of performance, installation, visual art, choreography, site-responsive and community arts. Set within a quarter square mile of Dublin’s north inner city, colloquially known as The Monto, the performances featured social concerns that have blighted the area over the past 100 years, including prostitution, trafficking, asylum-seeking, heroin addiction and the scandal of the Magdalene laundries. The Introduction places the four productions in their social, historical, cultural and economic contexts, and sets out strategies of analysis for performances that were concerned with time, place, history, memory, the city, ‘affect’ and the self as agent of action.
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Notes
- 1.
A bawdy folksong written by George Desmond Hodnett in 1958.
- 2.
http://punchdrunk.org.uk/faq (Accessed 17.7.16.)
- 3.
Malcolm Foley & J. John Lennon, ‘JFK and Dark Tourism: A Fascination with Assassination’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1996), pp. 198–211. (Foley and Lennon 1996) See also Will Coldwell, ‘Dark Tourism: Why Murder Sites and Disaster Zones are Proving Popular’, The Guardian, 31 October 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/oct/31/dark-tourism-murder-sites-disaster-zones (Accessed 17.7.16.) (Coldwell 2013)
- 4.
Lyn Gardner, ‘“Poverty Porn”: How Middle-class Theatres Depict Britain’s Poor’. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2016/apr/15/poverty-porn-theatre-boy-yen-rehome (Accessed 17.7.16.)
- 5.
The host/ghost connection was coined by Cliff McLucas, scenographer and coartistic director of the Welsh company, Brith Gof. Mike Pearson, his collaborator explains McLucas’s terminology in his book Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p. 70. (Pearson 2010)
- 6.
See Michael McKinnie, ‘Rethinking Site-specificity: Monopoly, Urban Space and the Cultural Economics of Site-Specific Performance’, in Anna Birch & Joanne Tompkins, eds., Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 37–53. (McKinnie 2012)
- 7.
https://anuproductions.wordpress.com/about/ (Accessed 22 December 2015.)
- 8.
Shaun Richards, ‘Plays of (ever) changing Ireland’ in Shaun Richards, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 1–17 (p. 1). (Richards 2004)
- 9.
Fintan O’Toole, ‘It’s Ireland’s best public theatre, and it needs our support’, The Irish Times, 28 September 2013. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/it-s-ireland-s-best-public-theatre-and-it-needs-our-support-1.1542665 (Accessed 22.12.15.) (O’Toole 2013)
- 10.
Peter Crawley, ‘Review: The Boys of Foley Street’, The Irish Times, 27 September 2012. http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/festival-hub/2012/09/27/review-the-boys-of-foley-street/ (Accessed 22.12.14.) (Crawley 2012)
- 11.
Brian Singleton, ‘Irish Theatre Devised’, in Nicholas Grene & Chris Morash, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 559–74. (Singleton 2016)
- 12.
Anna Birch & Joanne Tompkins, eds., Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave, 2012, p. 11. (Birch 2012)
- 13.
Josephine Machon, Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave, 2013, p. 44. (Machon 2013)
- 14.
Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. (Landsberg 2004)
- 15.
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 44. (Connerton 1989)
- 16.
Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution. 1970. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, pp. 18–19. (Lefebvre 2003)
Bibliography
Birch, Anna & Joanne Tompkins, eds. Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Coldwell, Will. ‘Dark Tourism: Why Murder Sites and Disaster Zones are Proving Popular’. The Guardian, 31 October 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/oct/31/dark-tourism-murder-sites-disaster-zones
Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Crawley, Peter. ‘Review: The Boys of Foley Street’. The Irish Times, 27 September 2012. http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/festival-hub/2012/09/27/review-the-boys-of-foley-street/
Foley, Malcolm, & J. John Lennon. ‘JFK and Dark Tourism: A Fascination with Assassination’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2 (4) (1996): 198–211.
Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. 1970. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Machon, Josephine. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
McKinnie, Michael. ‘Rethinking Site-Specificity: Monopoly, Urban Space and the Cultural Economics of Site-Specific Performance’. In Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice, eds. Anna Birch & Joanne Tompkins, 37–53. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Pearson, Mike. Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Richards, Shaun, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Singleton, Brian. ‘Irish Theatre Devised’. In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, eds. Nicholas Grene & Chris Morash, 559–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
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Singleton, B. (2016). Introduction. In: ANU Productions. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95133-8_1
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