Irish Shakespeare performance (faraway, so close!)

Abstract

I use Irish Shakespeare performance as a locus to interrogate how we negotiate and maintain cultural proximities and anxieties about what we term real, authentic Shakespeare in performance. Through archival research, I use Druid Theatre Company's early productions of Shakespeare plays—Much Ado About Nothing (1980–81) and As You Like It (1999)—to show how Irish Shakespeare performance occupies a nebulous position between traditionalism and iconoclasm, as well as between a desire to adhere to and to break a specific mold of performance tradition.