Performing Modernity

Elaine Sisson is Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture in the Faculty of Film, Art and Creative Technologies at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin, Ireland. Her publications include Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity 1922-1992, edited with L. King (2007) and Pearse’s Patriots: The Cult of Boyhood at St. Enda’s (2005).

Elaine Sisson has written a superb book about the cultural history of Ireland from independence to the ‘Emergency’ period. It will have a major effect on the study of Irish theatre by fully integrating sources such as costume and set design, by drawing on the influence of other forms of visual and popular culture including music and fashion, and by narrating a story that been neglected for far too long. It foregrounds the contributions of women, many of them never before properly written about, and it makes a vital contribution to the understanding of race and racism, social class, and many other previously neglected elements of the cultural history of early 20th-century Ireland. This is a book that I know I will be returning to many times in the future.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction1. Experimental Theatre and the New State: The Dublin Drama League, the Peacock Theatre to the Beginnings of the Gate Theatre Studio (1919-1928)2. Radicals and Cabarets: Toto Bannard Cogley’s Counter-cultural Networks (1924-1930)3. Continental Stagecraft: Visual Style, Stage Design and Modernism4. MacLiammóir as Costume Designer: Performing Sexual Identities at the Gate Theatre5. Fashion, Performance and American Popular Culture (1927-1937)6. Bright Young People: Fancy Dress Balls and Social Identity7. Narrating the State: Spectacle and Nation-Building (1926-1936)Conclusion ReferencesIndex