Toward the Heart and Art of Peacebuilding: The Role of Engaged Theatre in Post-Conflict Transition in Northern Ireland

This thesis explores the role of engaged theatre in peacebuilding through the lens of conflict transformation theory. With Northern Ireland as the context, it examines how engaged theatre creates spaces where difficult discussions around a challenging past can take place in a period of post-conflict transition. As part of its ancillary objective, this thesis also offers examples of digital storytelling providing initial insight into how digital media might contribute to the transformative potential of engaged theatre. The theoretical framework draws extensively on the work of conflict transformation theorist John Paul Lederach, a vocal advocate of the importance of artistic approaches to peacebuilding that address conflict-related issues in their cultural context. Lederach defines the capacity required for the creative transformation of conflict as moral imagination made up of four disciplines - acknowledgement of relational interdependency, practice of paradoxical curiosity, pursuit of creative acts, and risk-taking. The exploration of how theatre engages conflict and opens up space for the moral imagination to take hold in a society in transition is realised through an ethnographic-based methodological approach consisting of observational fieldwork, documentary sources and semi-structured interviews. The data collected between January 2014 and June 2015 focused on two theatre-centric case study projects each built around a play written, staged and performed to act as a catalyst for post-show discussions about unseen and unresolved legacies of the violent, protracted conflict in Northern Ireland. The research findings reveal audiences? recognition of the capacity of engaged theatre to create imaginative spaces where difficult questions can be raised through fiction and where people are invited to voice and reflect on their viewpoints and experiences within single-identity and cross-community settings. Moreover, initial review of theatre-centric digital practices show recognition of the long-term vision and generational aspects of peacebuilding in line with conflict transformation theory. This research contributes to knowledge in the area of theatre arts and peacebuilding, with the artistic continuum now extending to digital elements designed to record and increase the peacebuilding potential of engaged theatre work in societies in transition