Wendy Nicole Malone is a first-year postgraduate student in theatre studies at Dundalk Institute of Technology. Her thesis focuses on site-specificity and the use of space in twentieth century Irish theatre. She is particularly interested in the ways that theatrical site-specificity can interact with Irish history, and the commemoration of history through creative practices. She previously completed a BA (Hons) in Drama and Performance at Dundalk Institute of Technology, and a Master of Arts in Public History at the University of Limerick. As a theatre artist, she has worked on community theatre projects as stage manager and set designer and has written multiple original plays.

In 2007, Dublin-based theatre company Ouroboros Theatre Ireland toured their production of Brian Friel’s Making History. Focusing on the life of Hugh O’Neill as Earl of Tyrone and the English colonisation of Gaelic Ireland, the play serves as a fictionalised narrative of the precursing events and aftermath of the Battle of Kinsale. The production acted as a quadricentennial commemoration for the Flight of the Earls, touring from Kinsale to Donegal, and throughout Europe before ending in Rome as it followed the trail of 1607. This paper considers this production’s contextual site-specificity, and how the historical research that went into it ultimately illustrated the connection between places relevant to the Earl’s life and the events as they led to further securing the expansion of the British empire. It considers the approach to performing in non-theatre spaces, against the backdrop of castles once occupied by Irish kings and of battlefields, serving as physical reminders of Ireland’s colonial history.

This paper examines decisions made by Ouroboros in their production of Friel’s play and their simultaneous commemoration of a watershed event in Ireland’s colonisation. The theatre company entered collaborations with cultural institutions OPW and Heritage Ireland, allowing performances to take place in historical and culturally significant locations. This use of non-theatre spaces is emphasised by the orchestration of the tour to journey through both personal and greater historical connections, from O’Neill’s birthplace to the location of his flight from Ireland and beyond. This mirroring of the Flight of the Earls, as it takes place in a contemporary context and through a decolonial lens, challenges the historical conception of Ireland as a colony. This paper demonstrates that Ouroboros Theatre Ireland’s production of Making History is exemplary of how creative practice can intersect place, history and decolonialism against the backdrop of empire.