Set Piece, Set Peace? Negative Emotions and the Possibility of Change in Recent Stage Images of the North

Abstract

Drawing on Birte Heidemann's work on negative liminality and Sianne Ngai's reflections on the aesthetics of negative emotions, this paper investigates how the tangle of "dysphoric affects" (Ngai 3), that adhere to the North, is expressed and complicated in three recent plays: Stacey Gregg's Shibboleth (2015), David Ireland's Cyprus Avenue (2016) and Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman (2017). It argues that attention to the interplay between liminality and animatedness in these plays can illuminate how they reproduce or restructure the tropes associated with a Northern Irish imaginary.

Keywords

• Northern Ireland
• drama
• stage images
• negative emotions
• David Ireland
• Stacey Gregg
• Jez Butterworth