My Country, A Journey: A Research-Based Drama on the Irish Migrant Experience in Britain

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This project seeks to exploit the potential of research-based theatre in order to address a specific non-academic cultural need - powerfully articulated in recent speeches by the Irish President, Dr Michael D. Higgins - which is to draw from our historical experience of migration an appropriately ethical response to the arrival of migrants in our own times. To achieve this, it is proposed to transform the research insights of the critically acclaimed book that was the key output of the original project into a more accessible format which goes beyond the forms of dissemination that traditionally serve academic communities. Drawing on his book's experientially rich testimonies, the PI will work collaboratively with non-academic partners, third sector organisations and charitable bodies to create and tour a bespoke play that will holistically engage and encourage new audiences to explore the diverse experiences and identities of the Irish in Britain since 1700. This specially commissioned play, written by renowned community-based playwright-director Martin Lynch, will be premised on the central arguments of the original project, which are that the testimonies of memoirists unsettle assumptions of Irish migrant homogeneity and contradict clichéd views of emigration as a national tragedy. Consequently, the accent will be on the multiple ways of being Irish in Britain and on the extent to which migrant identities have been constituted in difference and division as much as in commonality and solidarity. By translating these personal narratives into an empathic drama, this innovative collaboration will provide an exciting opportunity to acquaint the wider British and Irish public with the central intellectual concerns of the original research, at a time when Ireland is once again shedding emigrants, many of whom are have begun to settle in Britain. As such, the play, which will tour community and cultural centres in Britain and Ireland over a three-week period, will offer an alternative performative way of accessing socially relevant knowledge, by eliciting responses that are experiential, embodied and affective, rather than simply cognitive. The project will feature an informative theatre programme, which will include an interview with the playwright-director, and post-performance panel discussions, which will allow audience members to ask questions and discuss the issues raised with the PI, playwright and cast. The project will also be accompanied by an innovative education and outreach programme, which will be modelled on previous successful programmes of this kind run by the participating not-for-profit theatre theatre company, Green Shoot Productions (GSP). This programme will take the form of six two-hour workshops delivered over six weeks in four selected venues: Belfast, Castlebar, Manchester and London. Each workshop will be co-ordinated by a local facilitator who will work with c.15 participants drawn from local communities in these places to enable them to shape and write down their memories and perceptions of emigration, a selection of which will be read at performances of the play and published in booklet form. Five of these workshops will precede the play's visit to these venues. The sixth will happen shortly afterwards, thereby providing a valuable additional means of capturing audience impact and feedback by working with an audience sample in a focused follow-up session. Although the reworking of personal narrative into performance has a long history, there has never been a staging of a project on Irish migration that purposefully dramatises research outcomes in this manner. The proposed project thus constitutes a novel way of making original research and its outcomes accessible to non-academic audiences in a dynamic, engaging and embodied way, thereby creating social and economic benefits through improvements in social and intellectual capital, social networking, community identity and quality of life.