[Download] "Coming out: Mcguinness's Dramaturgy and Queer Resistance (Critical Essay)" by Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Coming out: Mcguinness's Dramaturgy and Queer Resistance (Critical Essay)
- Author : Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 358 KB
Description
The most consistent trope in Frank McGuinness's playwriting is the placement of a gay or lesbian character in the central role as the dramatic protagonist. Whether reliving the events of World War One in Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme or imaginatively envisioning William Shakespeare escaping to the shores of Ireland after a poor performance in Mutabilitie, McGuinness, more often than not, tells his story through the experience and vision of life as a homosexual. What makes this reliable placement of the queer character at the centre of a piece of theatre even more interesting is the fact that McGuinness also consistently relies on the events of the past to create his very contemporary plays. In so doing, McGuinness not only situates homosexuality within seemingly incongruous historical circumstances, he reconfigures or, as I will argue throughout this essay, queers cultural assumptions of the past which continue to shape present realities. McGuinness's plays represent a unique discursive practice within the literary dramatic tradition of modern Ireland: a practice which reconfigures the historical memory central to the formation of post-Renaissance identity, while simultaneously giving voice to the otherwise silent or silenced queer voices of Irish identity. McGuinness queers the past in order to create a space in contemporary Ireland to allow for alternative versions of Irish citizenship to emerge. Through the conventions of stage and dramatic fiction, McGuinness acts as historian or archaeologist, illuminating a marginalized yet ever-present reality of Irish identity. His plays not only articulate the experience of gay and lesbian subjectivities over a vast expanse of time and space through narrative, they also confront the preferred naturalism of the Irish dramatic tradition through a dramaturgy which prefers fragmentation over continuity.