ABSTRACT
This chapter will interrogate the relationship between austerity, conflict, and the second-wave feminist movement in the north of Ireland during the 1980s. This research contends that feminist performance practitioners reflected the strategies of the Irish second-wave feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s by using similar methodologies in their practice in order to navigate and represent working-class women’s marginalised experience.
This chapter will analyse and situate Irish second-wave feminism in an international context and interrogate the specific jurisdictional differences between feminisms on the island of Ireland through an interrogation of the social contexts that influenced them. The argument will focus on the intersection between the austerity caused by the troubles and the women’s movement in the north of Ireland, analysing how the events and impacts of the troubles informed, influenced, and hampered feminist progress, resulting in what I term a double-jeopardy of discrimination.
This will be achieved through an analysis of Charabanc Theatre company. I will demonstrate how their method of employing the ‘female gaze’ in the creation of women-focused performance demonstrates a connection to the methodologies of the women’s movement in the north of Ireland at that time. This section illustrates that Charabanc’s non-sectarian focus on working-class stories raised awareness of issues like domestic violence and poverty.
