Marianne Kennedy is a Senior Lecturer of Drama and Theatre Studies in University of Galway, and theatre director and producer. Alongside her academic work, Kennedy is theatre director and producer and the Creative Director of The O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, as well as AD of the University of Galway's ‘Arts in Action’ programme, producing lunchtime performances on campus, across circus, theatre, music, film, literature dance and VR.  She is the founder of the Irish language theatre performance and research collective Giorria Theatre, and convenor of Ceangal | Cwlwm, a research and performance initiative between Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  She has served as CEO of Siamsa Tíre Theatre Arts Centre, and the National Folk Theatre of Ireland,  and also as Director of An Taibhdhearc, the National Theatre of the Irish language. She is a current board member of Galway Theatre Festival.

Ireland’s Decade of Centenaries (2012–2023) offered state-sponsored commemorations of pivotal moments such as the struggle for independence, the civil war, and the partitioning of the island, often framing decolonization as a historical process neatly resolved with the foundation of the Irish Free State. This paper examines how contemporary Irish-language theatre, and specifically Minimal Human Contact (2021), Kneecap (2024), Cogadh na Saoirse (2021) and An Conradh (2022), engage in decolonial resistance, using language and indeed the performances themselves to critique the lingering imperial shadow while reimagining Ireland’s place within global power structures.  

Naoise Ó Cairealláin’s Minimal Human Contact (2021), interrogates themes of isolation, alienation, and dispossession in the context of Irish identity; the film Kneecap (2024), steeped in irreverence, further critiques respectability politics and language revival as tools of assimilation rather than resistance; and Cogadh na Saoirse (2021) and An Conradh (2022), offer subversive reimaginings of historical moments, revealing the tensions between local memory and globalized narratives of heritage.  All four productions, utilising Irish-language storytelling to challenge respectability politics and disrupt official performances of history tied to cultural commodification under state sponsored initiatives. These works are created and embedded in the urban landscapes of Galway and Belfast, and the gaeltacht areas adjacent to them, all spaces where the intersections of colonial legacies and contemporary global inequities are powerfully negotiated, thus reclaiming place-based identities and rejecting the erasure or dispossession of cultural and linguistic histories.

By situating these works within broader decolonial and cultural geographic frameworks, this paper argues that Irish-language theatre and film reject static national narratives, exposing the uneven power dynamics that persist under globalization. Instead, they envision decolonization as an active, ongoing project that reclaims cultural pride, critiques embedded structures of privilege, and reimagines Ireland’s postcolonial futures through language, place, and performance.

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Works Cited:

Ahmed, Sara. “Melancholic Migrants.” The Promise of Happiness, Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 121–59.

Fíbín sa Taibhdhearc. Cogadh na Saoirse. Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, 2021.

Fíbín sa Taibhdhearc. An Conradh. Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, 2022.

Kneecap. Kneecap. Dir. Rich Peppiatt, Outburst Arts Festival, 2024.

Ó Cairealláin, Naoise. Minimal Human Contact. Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, 2021.

Slobodian, Quinn. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Harvard University Press, 2018.