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This thesis investigates queer identity in performance in Northern Ireland, focusing on its socioculturally disruptive agency. Queer theory provides a poststructuralist paradigm that unsettles any binary structures in the analysis of gender and sexuality in social, historical and cultural studies. Its disruptive analysis can also be harnessed to subvert the outwardly dysfunctional sectarian binary in Northern Irish society by critiquing the construction of identities. I explore this localised interpretation of queer and argue for a re-evaluation through a ‘queer reading’ (or ‘queering’) of recent Northern Irish cultural/theatrical history, contending that this geographically particular reading of queerness can place it as a desegregated identity exemplar. The practice portion of the thesis then stages this desegregating queer agency and explores its potentials for cultural comment and critical reordering. I approach the research as a scholar and a theatre practitioner, with the result that the thesis is undertaken and organised as a 60% written dissertation along with 40% creative practice. Firstly the thesis explores the somewhat obfuscated history of gay characters in Northern Irish drama (especially in non-canonical, alternative works) and their attendant queerness or disordering (or reordering) potentials in relation to the ethnosectarian conflict and also contemporary post-conflict Northern Ireland. I will pay particular attention to cross-dressed characters in performance as both popular and subversively queer parodies that often collapse sectarian binaries. I then theorise how this queer agency can work dramaturgically through my practice and how its transformative potentiality can be harnessed through such cultural interventions. I will conclude that the localised Northern Irish lens establishes a model of situating and understanding queer that, through engaging with the discourse around conflict resolution, provides a useful alternative identity marker beyond any binaries.

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The plays of Ewan MacColl have largely been overlooked by theatre historians and practitioners alike; the primary objective of this thesis is to reappraise this body of work and, more broadly, to re-examine British Modernism and the genealogy of left-wing engaged theatre. The thesis questions the idea of popular culture and suggests MacColl’s work represents a search for a new popular culture that challenges the dominance of uncritical and, according to him, negative elements of current working class culture (most cinema, pop music, gambling, bingo etc) that control thought and encourage the status quo. In order to present a different appraisal of British twentieth century theatre, this thesis examines MacColl’s primary innovations. He incorporates a broad range of conventions into his work, beginning with agitprop, a genre that gave his company the flexibility and spontaneity of a political rally. His canon of work reveals the playwright’s interaction with a variety of conventions from the European and American avant-garde; movements such as Epic Theatre, Constructivism, Expressionism and contemporary dance are juxtaposed with older forms to create an innovative theatrical genre that remains unparalleled within British theatrical history. Examining the influence of these movements with specific reference to the ideas of figures such as Meyerhold, Appia, Brecht, Vakhtangov and Laban, this thesis contends that MacColl’s plays mark a constant search for a form of critical realism, a suitable method for examining contemporary society and advocating socio-political change. This realism is also impacted by the oral tradition (the Mummers’ play, the Ballad form, traditional song and <i>commedia dell’arte</i>) and an established literary tradition (ancient Greek Old Comedy, Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre). It is this dialogue of old and new, tradition and innovation that defines his work.

After an introductory chapter which places general considerations pertinent to a study of Viennese parody within a wider context, chapters II and III provide a historical survey respectively of parody in Vienna, and of music in the theatre in Vienna. Chapter III in particular contains much new material, its section (l, e) correcting the erroneous but hitherto generally held view that music played little or no part in the performances of the German company during its early years in the Ka rtnertor Theatre. Chapter IV is the first attempt to examine the term quodlibet as used in late 18th and early 19th century Vienna and to study the pasticcio play and the musical pot-pourri. Chapters V, VI and VII are devoted to a detailed analysis of three parodied operas; no such study seems until now to have been undertaken. The writer has studied not only the various printed and surviving manuscript versions of the texts but also the extant musical scores and parts connected with them. A bonus was the discovery of an unknown Nestroy autograph. Chapter VIII includes material that justifies the writer's contention that sociological as well as musical factors are essential to a balanced study of the Volkskomödie; these factors combined indicate the vitality and relative absence of class distinction in the theatrical life of Vienna in the period under consideration. Appendix 1 contains a list of all identified parodistic works that were written for Vienna in the period being examined, and Appendix 2 is a tabulation showing the size of the various theatre orchestras.

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Stanislavsky’s seminal text An Actor Prepares remains popular and highly influential, difficulties of translation and editing notwithstanding. This thesis proposes that the book delivers a systematic encounter with an implicit and orderly model of subjective experience, to be found in the embodied practice articulated in the text, and which has therefore influenced generations of actors. Process orientated logical typing is employed as an analytical methodology in order to reveal the underlying structure of this model. This new approach to Stanislavsky’s core concept of Perezhivanie reveals the extent to which subjective experience informs the text and affects the reader. Systematic analysis of structural aspects of the text demonstrate them to be consistent with the disposition of classical rhetoric. Within this robust framework, patterns of exercise function and distribution indicate an underlying lesson plan and a strategic pedagogy, in the context of which difficulties and successes incrementally potentiate aspects of the model of experience that then provide possibilities among which choices can be made for the purposes of the actor. Stanislavsky’s pedagogy is condensed and represented, and the structure of the underlying model is made explicit. Five governing principles offer a new perspective on the problem of the actor and Stanislavsky’s solutions to it, and show how specific idiosyncracies of individual experience can be used in practice. The System is then revealed in its own terms, in the light of which key concepts and their inter-relationships can clearly be situated. This research sheds new light on the value of An Actor Prepares as a pedagogical tool and a model for the depiction of training on the page. The identification of new levels of specificity in Stanislavsky’s model of experience affords a recontextualisation of the System that will clarify practice, facilitate differentiation between interpretations and permit effective comparison with the work of others as well as making it possible to generate new versions while maintaining the consistency and coherence of Stanislavsky’s model.

Count Harry Kessler (1868–1937) was an intimate of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and a friend of Richard Strauss. Kessler’s early exposure to European literature and works of music theatre, and the extensive network of theatre contacts that he made, combined with his appreciation of art, gave him a particular theatrical vision that impacted on two stage works by the Strauss-Hofmannsthal partnership: the opera Der Rosenkavalier (1911) and the ballet Josephs Legende (1914). The thesis traces, in particular, the derivation of Der Rosenkavalier from a French opérette, L’Ingénu libertin (1907) by Louis Artus and Claude Terrasse, which Kessler (alone of the three partners) had seen. The dramatic and musical structure of this work is analysed and compared with the work that it went on to inspire. The thesis concludes that Kessler’s theatrical vision was a major component in the architecture and dramatic structure of both Der Rosenkavalier and Josephs Legende, and that he should be recognised as fully as one of the three co-creators of the former work, as he has already been of the latter.