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Chapter 3 - Performing the Repertoire

The Archive vs. the Repertoire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2020

Hélène Lecossois
Affiliation:
Université de Lille
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Summary

Chapter 3 argues that the cultural and performance practices of the Irish peasantry written into Synge’s plays celebrate the living on of rural Ireland’s residual culture. It focusses on 'keening' ‒ or 'caoineadh' in Irish ‒ in Deirdre of the Sorrows, The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea. The frame that Synge chose for his adaptation of the ritual of the Irish lament, that is, the stage of an institutional theatre, contributed to some degree in hollowing the practice out of its agency and ran the risk of transforming the ritual into a mere spectacle. However, as keening was part of a performance tradition, it also possessed abilities to resist this form of disempowerment. The stage directions relating to the performance of the lament ritual in the three plays are very much open to interpretation and leave the director free to fashion the performance of the keen as he or she pleases. Depending on the directorial choices then, the performance of the stage keen will either seal the irrevocable loss of a cultural formation or highlight its residual living on and encourage a perception of loss as a creative process, containing germs for a reconfiguration of the collective.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Performing the Repertoire
  • Hélène Lecossois, Université de Lille
  • Book: Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge
  • Online publication: 09 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108767996.004
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  • Performing the Repertoire
  • Hélène Lecossois, Université de Lille
  • Book: Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge
  • Online publication: 09 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108767996.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Performing the Repertoire
  • Hélène Lecossois, Université de Lille
  • Book: Performance, Modernity and the Plays of J. M. Synge
  • Online publication: 09 November 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108767996.004
Available formats
×