Abstract
ANU’s Laundry, staged in a former laundry building in Dublin’s north city centre, visibly and viscerally merged the bodies of the past with the bodies of the present in performance. This production provoked conflicting memories and histories in the public sphere, urgent queries regarding the implementation of constitutional law, and renewed scrutiny of wider social value systems. In summary, Laundry staged and performed historical and modern trauma in Ireland. Many of the women the production referenced lie in unmarked graves, their lives and deaths rarely witnessed or documented. Acts of remembrance and ANU’s trademark ‘moments of communion’ created potent encounters for contemporary audiences and communities via site-specific, postdramatic and immersive staging strategies. Laundry staged some of the bodies the Irish body politic worked hard to hide.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
ANU Productions, Laundry, directed by Louise Lowe at the site of the former Magdalene Laundry, Seán McDermott Street (formerly Gloucester Street), Dublin, September 29–October 15 2011. Laundry was premiered as part of The Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2011. Creative Producer Hannah Mullan, Designer Owen Boss, Lighting Design Sarah Jane Shiels, Sound Design Ivan Birsthistle and Vincent Doherty, Choreographer Emma O’Kane. Cast includes Úna Kavanagh, Sorcha Kenny, Catriona Lynch, Niamh McCann, Stephen Murray, Bairbre Ní Caoimh, Peter O’Byrne, Robbie O’Connor, Niamh Shaw and Zara Starr. Community cast includes Martin Collins, Stephen Duigenan, Paddy Fitzpatrick, Tracey McCann, Laura Murray, Eric O’Brien, Fiona Shiel and Lauren White.
Laundry won ‘Best Production’ at the Irish Times Theatre Awards 2012.
- 2.
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 26.
- 3.
This information is accessed from the 1911 Census data available on the ‘Justice for Magdalenes’ website, relating specifically to the Gloucester Street laundry. http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/gloucester_st_1911.htm Accessed 12 May 2016.
- 4.
Louise Lowe, Unpublished Interview with Miriam Haughton. Dublin, 15 May 2012.
- 5.
NASC is The Irish Immigrant Support Centre, and its website provides a history of Direct Provision in Ireland. http://www.nascireland.org/campaigns-for-change/direct-provision/ Accessed 15 April 2016.
- 6.
Patricia Casey’s article ‘Any Review of Past Abuses Must Extend to Asylums’, 17 June 2014, for The Independent states that ‘According to the book Asylums, Mental Health Care and the Irish 1800–2010 (edited by Pauline Prior) data from the World Health Organisation showed that Ireland exceeded all other states in its rate of institutionalisation of the mentally ill… Moreover, our proclivity to institutionalise continued even after other countries were dismantling their asylums’. http://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/patricia-casey-any-review-of-past-abuses-must-extend-to-asylums-30354233.html Accessed 15 April 2016.
- 7.
The survivor advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes updates its website with their press releases, government responses and media coverage of this campaign. Further information can be found at http://www.magdalenelaundries.com.
- 8.
The full report can be accessed and downloaded from The Department of Justice and Equality website http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013.
- 9.
Stephen Collins and Harry McGee, ‘Kenny Criticised for Failure to Issue Magdalene Apology’, Irish Times, 6 February 2013. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0206/breaking5.html Accessed 6 February 2013.
- 10.
In the interview conducted by Claire McCormack broadcast on RTÉ’s Radio 1’s ‘The God Slot’ at 10 p.m. on 8 March 2013, two nuns reacted to the allegations regarding suffering and abuse in the Magdalene laundries at the hands of the various Orders who managed them, on condition that the nuns, their congregations, and where they worked were not named. The voices heard belong to performers. Patsy McGarry reports in ‘Magdalene Nuns Hit Back at Critics and Defend Their Role’ in The Irish Times, ‘When asked whether an apology might be appropriate after the McAleese report on the laundries, “Sister A” responded, “apologise for what?” […] “There was a terrible need for a lot of those women because they were on the street with no social welfare and starving. We provided shelters for them. It was the ‘no welfare’ state and we are looking with today’s eyes at a totally different era.”’ http://www.irishtimes.com/news/magdalene-nuns-hit-back-at-critics-and-defend-their-role-1.1319508 Accessed 6 August 2013.
- 11.
Harry McGee reports in ‘Nuns Say They Will Not Pay Magdalene Compensation’ That ‘The Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters Have Informed Minister for Justice Alan Shatter in Recent Days That They Will Not Pay into the Fund, Which Could Cost up to €58 Million’, The Irish Times, 16 July 2013. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/nuns-say-they-will-not-pay-magdalene-compensation-1.1464737 Accessed 6 August 2013.
- 12.
Nigel Rodley, UN Chairman of Human Rights Committee, quoted in ‘A Misogynist State’, Irish Examiner, 17 July 2014. http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/a-misogynist-state-275685.html Accessed 18 April 2016.
- 13.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge. Trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1998), 3.
- 14.
Eoin O’Sullivan and Ian O’Donnell, ‘Preface’, in Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients, Prisoners, and Penitents (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), x.
- 15.
Roger Luckhurst, The Trauma Question (London: Routledge, 2008), 6.
- 16.
Anna Birch and Joanne Tompkins, eds. Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), 3.
- 17.
Justice for Magdalenes ‘Booklet’, accessible on the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) website https://www.nwci.ie/download/pdf/jfm_booklet.pdf.
- 18.
Mari Steed, Committee Director of Justice for Magdalenes (Email Correspondence with Miriam Haughton, 18 September 2012). Though stating this number, Steed warns that Justice for Magdalenes are not satisfied with this estimated statistic. There is not an official statistic detailing the number of Magdalene penitents in Ireland. This is due to a variety of reasons, which include the removal of a woman’s birth name on entry to the convent, a refusal by the convents to release the names of the penitents they controlled, and a lack of disclosure in Irish society concerning Magdalene history. For instance, as a result of the major shame attached to a family member entering a Magdalene laundry, the woman’s family may have claimed she had emigrated. The Justice for Magdalene website can be accessed at http://www.magdalenelaundries.com.
- 19.
The McAleese report. It does not include Protestant-run laundries.
- 20.
Mary Raftery, ‘Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries Scandal Must Be Laid to Rest’, The Guardian, 8 June 2011. Raftery reports ‘The nuns had been dabbling on the stock exchange. The results were unfortunate. When a company they had invested in went bust, they decided to sell off a portion of their Dublin land holdings to cover the losses. The snag was that the land contained a mass grave. It was full of “penitents”, the label attached to the thousands of women locked up in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. This particular order, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, ran High Park, the largest such laundry in the country’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/08/irealnd-magdalene-laundries-scandal-un Accessed 1 October 2011.
- 21.
Frances Finnegan states that ‘The Rule of Silence’ was enforced for periods throughout the day and most stringently at night in Do Penance or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 22–25. Indeed, as this analysis will detail, this ‘Rule of Silence’ also affected Irish society. Many of the rules of the Magdalen asylums were circulated in Conferences and Instructions of Mother Mary of St. Euphrasia Pelletier (1885), from which the Practical Rules for the Use of the Religious of the Good Shepherd for the Direction of the Classes was selected.
- 22.
Emilie Pine, The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 5.
- 23.
Brian Singleton, ANU Productions: The Monto Cycle (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2016), 3.
- 24.
Residential Institutions Redress Board, ‘Welcome’ http://www.rirb.ie/ Accessed 5 May 2014.
- 25.
Department of Justice and Equality, ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to Establish the Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’, http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013 Accessed 5 May 2014.
- 26.
McAleese Report, 29 i. ‘Sexual Abuse, ii. Physical Abuse, iii. Psychological and verbal abuse and non-physical punishment.
- 27.
The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA). www.hiainquiry.org Accessed 5 May 2014.
- 28.
Amnesty International Briefing, ‘Magdalene Laundry-Type Institutions in Northern Ireland’. ‘Appendix 1: List of Magdalene Laundries and Similar Institutions in Northern Ireland, 8–9. http://www.amnesty.org.uk/sites/default/files/doc_23218.pdf Accessed 5 May 2014.
- 29.
Rosita Boland’s article ‘Tuam Mother and Baby Home: The Trouble with the Sceptic Tank Story’, Irish Times, 7 June 2014, details that ‘Catherine Corless’s research revealed that 796 children died at St. Mary’s’. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393 Accessed 15 April 2016.
- 30.
Patricia Burke-Brogan, Unpublished Interview with Miriam Haughton. Galway, 18 January 2013.
- 31.
Melissa Sihra, ed. Women in Irish Theatre: A Century of Authorship and Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 1.
- 32.
Carl O’Brien, ‘Up to 100 Illegal Adoptions Uncovered’, The Irish Times, 12 January 2013. O’Brien reports ‘State authorities have uncovered about 100 cases of children who were born to unmarried women and may have been illegally transferred to adoptive parents as recently as the 1970s. These informal adoptions were conducted outside the law and have left the children in circumstances where it may be impossible to trace their real birth parents. In many cases the children are believed to have been given at birth to other families who then falsely registered these children as their own. Gardaí have investigated whether adoption agencies and doctors were involved or acted illegally by falsely registering the births. However, there have been no prosecutions to date due to a lack of evidence and the lapse of time since the events. […] Following the introduction of the 1952 Adoption Act, it became an offence to adopt a child without a formal adoption order. This legislation also included safeguards aimed at protecting the mother, such as ensuring that a child be at least three months old before an adoption is authorised. The Adoption Authority of Ireland is aware of in excess of 100 cases where there are no records for people who say they were adopted. This indicates their birth registration records may have been falsified. However, some cases took place before the 1952 legislation, when there was no law against informal adoptions. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2013/0112/1224328743265.html Accessed 13 January 2013.
- 33.
Finnegan’s research in Do Penance or Perish claims that ‘they [Irish women] were extremely active in “recommending” women to Magdalen Asylums; and more significantly, where family members were responsible for such admissions, 72 per cent of those “brought” to the Good Shepherd Homes were consigned to the institutions by female relatives. Further, the largest, most successful and most enduring Refuges to which penitents were confined (and this was the case in Britain too) were staffed and managed exclusively by nuns (2001, 3).
- 34.
James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), xv.
- 35.
Pamela Howard, What is Scenography? Second Edition (London: Routledge, 2009), 49.
- 36.
I refer to ‘postdramatic theatre’ according to Hans-Thies Lehmann ‘s theorisation in Postdramatic Theatre, Trans. Karen Jurs-Munby (London: Routledge, 2006), 27. He states, ‘The adjective “postdramatic” denotes a theatre that feels bound to operate beyond drama, at a time “after” the authority of the dramatic paradigm in theatre. What it does not mean is an abstract negation and mere looking away from the tradition of drama.’
- 37.
For further context on experimental forms and themes of Irish theatre in the twentieth century, see Ian R. Walsh, Experimental Irish Theatre: After W.B. Yeats (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012).
- 38.
According to the ‘About us’ section of the Legion of Mary website, ‘The Legion of Mary is a lay apostolic association of Catholics who, with the sanction of the Church and under the powerful leadership of Mary Immaculate, Mediatrix of all Graces, serve the Church and their neighbour on a voluntary basis in about 170 countries. The first meeting of the Legion of Mary took place in Myra House, Francis Street, Dublin, Ireland, on 7 September, 1921. […] Drawing its inspiration from the True Devotion to Mary, as taught by St. Louis Marie de Montfort, and which had a profound influence on the founder of the Legion, the Servant of God, Frank Duff, the Legion is at the disposal of the Bishops and Priests for use in the mission of the Church’. http://www.legionofmary.ie/about/ Accessed 2 August 2012.
- 39.
Sara Keating, ‘Review of Laundry’, Irish Theatre Magazine, 29 September 2011. http://www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Ulster-Bank-Dublin-Theatre-Festival-2011/Laundry Accessed 1 February 2012.
- 40.
Louise Lowe, ‘Louise Lowe in Conversation with Patrick Lonergan’ at the J.M. Synge Summer School for Irish Drama 2012. 30 June 2012. Avondale House, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. Public event.
- 41.
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), 148.
- 42.
Michel Foucault, ‘The Stage of Philosophy: A Conversation Between Michel Foucault and Moriaki Wotanabe’, New York Magazine of Contemporary Art and Theory, 1–21 (1978), 6.
- 43.
Louise Lowe, Laundry Seminar which took place at UCD Drama Studies Centre in Dublin on 26 October 2011.
- 44.
In earlier performances, this man’s ‘daughter’ would have been present in the room also, still fighting her father’s order to enter the laundry as a result of her pregnancy. However, she was also performing in World End’s Lane at the time of my attendance.
- 45.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be found online. The website offers the history of the document, ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the General Assembly on 10 December 1948, was the result of the experience of the Second World War’. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/history.shtml Accessed 2 August 2012.
- 46.
An article published in the online media source The Journal, ‘A Life Unlived: 35 Years of Slavery in a Magdalene Laundry’, maps the life and death of Margaret Bullen as retold by her daughter, Samantha Long. The article outlines ‘Samantha Long’s mother Margaret Bullen was placed in Gloucester Street (now Seán McDermott Street) Laundry c.1967 and died 35 years later, never having been released into society and her own home. Margaret died of an illness known as Goodpasture Syndrome, a disease of the kidneys and liver—one of the causes is exposure to industrial strength-chemicals such as those used in the laundries. […] At roughly the age of 16, Margaret was sent to the Magdalene Laundry at Gloucester Street. The exact time and circumstances of her move there are not clear because Samantha and her sister are still waiting on full records to be supplied to them on their mother’s past. She became pregnant—twice—with Samantha and her twin sister Etta, and later with another daughter, while officially under the care of the Gloucester Street nuns. The circumstances of these conceptions are again shrouded in mystery but Samantha says her conversations in later life with her mother when they were reunited led her to believe that Margaret had been the victim of sexual abuse and predators several times”. http://www.thejournal.ie/magdalene-laundry-true-story-margaret-bullen-samantha-long-614350-Sep2012/ Accessed 22 January 2013.
- 47.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1991), 195.
- 48.
For most of the earlier performances, this taxi-drive would have incorporated performance from World End’s Lane which was taking place en route. Performers from World End’s Lane would stop and enter the taxi, asking questions of the participant inside it.
- 49.
Evelyn Glynn, an artist and activist for women’s rights, set up a website documenting the oral histories of women attached to the Limerick Magdalene Laundry. She named her project ‘Breaking the Rule of Silence’. Her website can be accessed here http://www.magdalenelaundrylimerick.com/biography.html.
- 50.
Helen Freshwater, Theatre and Audience (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 2–3.
- 51.
Emma O’Kelly, ‘Schools and the Catholic Church’, RTÉ News, 6 April 2011. http://www.rte.ie/news/special-reports/2011/0406/299556-catholic/ Accessed 30 January 2014.
- 52.
Susan Bennett, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. Second Edition (London: Routledge, 1997), vii.
- 53.
Constitution of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Eireann) Act 1922, Article 6. http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1922/en/act/pub/0001/sched1.html Accessed 17 May 2012.
- 54.
Bunreacht na hÉireann 1937, Article 40.4.1 http://www.constitution.ie/constitution-of-ireland/default.asp Accessed 17 May 2012.
Bibliography
Print Sources
Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin.
———. 1998. The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge. Translated by Robert Hurley. London: Penguin.
Freshwater, Helen. 2009. Theatre and Audience. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Howard, Pamela. 2009. What is Scenography? 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramtic Theatre. Translated by Karen Jurs-Munby. London: Routledge.
Luckhurst, Roger. 2008. The Trauma Question. London: Routledge.
O’Sullivan, Eoin, and Ian O’Donnell. 2012. Coercive Confinement in Post-Independence Ireland: Patients, Prisoners, and Penitents. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Singleton, Brian. 2016. ANU Productions: The Monto Cycle. Palgrave Pivot.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Haughton, M. (2018). Containment: Laundry (2011), Directed by Louise Lowe. In: Staging Trauma. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53663-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53663-1_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53662-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53663-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)