Christina Reid's Theatre of Memory and Identity: Within and Beyond the Troubles

203 Pages·2018·2.043 MB·English

by  Rachel Tracie

C H R I S T I N A R E I D ' S T H E AT R E O F
M E M O RY A N D I D E N T I T Y
Within and Beyond the Troubles
R A C H E L T R A C I E
Christina Reid’s Theatre of Memory and Identity
Rachel Tracie
Christina Reid’s
Theatre of Memory
and Identity
Within and Beyond the Troubles
Rachel Tracie
Azusa Pacific University
Azusa, CA, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-97875-8 ISBN 978-3-319-97876-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97876-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959097
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P
reface
As a young master’s student in an Irish theatre course, I was tasked with
doing a presentation on an Irish playwright. As I dutifully scanned the list
of writers given to me by my professor, I saw only three women listed—
Anne Devlin, Marina Carr, and Christina Reid. Not familiar with any but
determined to explore the work of a woman, I chose Christina Reid. From
that first encounter with her plays 20-odd years ago, to the PhD thesis, the
conference papers, the interviews, the archives, and essays, I am still end-
lessly fascinated by Reid’s work and committed to getting others to be
fascinated by it as well. As a Canadian, now living in America, my direct
experience of many of the things that directly influenced Reid’s work—
Northern Ireland, the Troubles, and the Protestant working-class tradi-
tion—is slight and yet her plays and writings still challenge my perspectives
and help me think about life in a profound way. From questions of iden-
tity, to the family and community memories that vie for prominence in my
own life, and the tension between what I know now and what I didn’t
know as a child, all of these weave their way through her work and into my
own life. As I have read and researched, I have wondered why there hasn’t
been a more sustained study of her work—why her importance is often
assumed rather than analyzed. This study puts Reid front and center by
presenting her perspective, her plays, and her productions, to give a sense
of the breadth and depth of her writing and career. This book has been a
long while in the making, and I hope it honors Reid and drives continued
interest in her work, which it so richly deserves.
I would like to acknowledge the staff at the Linen Hall Library for pro-
viding access to Christina Reid’s archives and to Azusa Pacific University’s
v
vi PREFACE
Faculty Research Grant for making the trip to view them possible. I would
like to thank Tara McCausland who was willing to share with me stories of
her life with her mother and Anne Devlin for being so open and candid
about her own relationship with Reid. Special thanks to Richard Allen
Cave for the invaluable support and direction at the beginning of this
research. And finally, to Reid herself, for meeting with me on two occa-
sions to discuss her life and helping me to find my own voice through her
work.
Azusa, CA, USA Rachel Tracie
c
ontents
1 A Troubles Playwright? 1
2 A Woman and a Writer 11
3 Did You Hear the One About the Irishman…?: Comic
Transformations 23
4 Tea in a China Cup: Tea and Memories 37
5 Joyriders: Geography and Identity 67
6 My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name?: Memory and 
Intransigence 93
7 The Belle of the Belfast City: Family and Photography 119
8 Clowns: Trauma and Survival 153
9 Breadth and Depth 171
vii
viii CoNTENTS
10 L egacy 189
Further Reading 193
Index 197
CHAPTER 1
A Troubles Playwright?
In my visits to Belfast over the past 15 years, I have, like many others,
hopped into a black cab to take the “Troubles” tour, wandered through
the Ulster Museum, and marveled at Samson and Goliath, the massive
yellow cranes that dominate the skyline. I came to Belfast as an out-
sider—a Canadian residing in California, who had a “reader’s” view of
the city. I had read books about the Troubles—about the violence that
escalated in the late 1960s due to heightened divisions between Catholic/
nationalist and Protestant/unionist communities. And the arrival of the
British army and the increasingly violent paramilitary activity that led to
years of conflict followed by an uneasy peace after the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement. On my first tour of the city, I was struck by the weightedness
of the history made concrete in the places I visited. The Peace Wall, six
meters high with barbed wire atop brick and stone, separated the pre-
dominantly Catholic and nationalist Falls Road from the predominantly
Protestant and unionist Shankill Road; the homes on either side still had
protective screens fitted over back windows should a petrol bomb or
some other object of violence find its way over the fence. Murals colored
the landscape, honoring martyrs, displaying historic battles, and
documenting paramilitary violence. And commemorative gardens hon-
ored the dead of past wars and the conflict—some of them killed by
impossibly large plastic bullets,1 like the one the tour guide placed in my
hand. Despite the almost 20-year gap between my first visit and my last,
the physical markers of the conflict were largely unchanged—the peace
© The Author(s) 2018 1
R. Tracie, Christina Reid’s Theatre of Memory and Identity,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97876-5_1
2 R. TRACIE
wall was still there, albeit covered with more names written in sharpie by
the many tourists who make their stop on the tour. Some of the walls
have even been taken down.2 The more divisive murals had been painted
over with less violent, more cultural scenes, but the biggest change, was
in the way the places were described by my tour guide. He spoke can-
didly about the changes that had happened since he was a young man
living on the Falls Road. He spoke of his own children, who now learned
about the Troubles in their history classes, and who had no personal
memory of the conflict. He spoke of his daughter who was good at math
and who was part of the generation that he believes will finally take
Belfast out of the shadow of the conflict. This was a common theme
amongst people I talked to—the desire to be known for something
beyond the Troubles. A difficult task in a city which, as my cab driver put
it, “makes a tourist industry out of tragedy.” How does one move
beyond such a weighted history?
The theater in Ireland has been a major force in exploring such issues.
From the Irish National Theatre Movement in the early part of the twen-
tieth century to the work of contemporary dramatists writing about and
beyond the Peace Process, theater in Ireland has been concerned with
making sense of and coming to terms with history. What has fascinated
playwrights over the years is how these events are imprinted on the indi-
vidual, weave their way into the community, and become the fabric of the
nation. Critics and scholars have then worked to analyze the dramatic out-
put by making connections, developing categories, and exploring signifi-
cance. Anthony Roche described the past in Irish drama as having a unique
place, where “[t]he best contemporary Irish playwrights are engaged in a
search for dramatic means to reinterpret by re-imagining that past. All
offer alternative narratives whose aim is liberation, a setting free of
ghosts.”3 And Nicholas Grene observed that “[t]he Irish in their obses-
sion with history are often said, like the Bourbons, to have learned noth-
ing and forgotten nothing. Modern Irish dramatists have tried to belie this
reputation by a recourse to history which will enlighten and illuminate the
present.”4 What becomes difficult in a time of heightened political, social,
and religious tension, such as the Troubles, is that the past and present are
so intertwined they can be difficult to separate. This was evident in a
debate that emerged in the 1980s, regarding the place of history and
memory in Irish theater. Vocal in this discussion was Lynda Henderson,
editor of Theatre Ireland, who was concerned with the way in which Irish
playwrights seemed to “find their creative stimulus in the tap roots of the