Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?

This essay is a reflection on the play, Thailand! What’s Love Got To Do With It?, by Máirtín de Cógáin and Brian Desmond, first produced in Cork, Ireland, in 2007. Thailand is both documentary play and metaphor: documentary in that it dramatizes an analysis of perspectives expressed by Irish sex tou...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Desmond, Brian
Format: text
Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss21/24
https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1520/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n21_2022_2013_202014_5D_205.3_ForumKritika_Desmond.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Ateneo De Manila University
id ph-ateneo-arc.kk-1520
record_format eprints
spelling ph-ateneo-arc.kk-15202024-12-17T13:48:02Z Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It? Desmond, Brian This essay is a reflection on the play, Thailand! What’s Love Got To Do With It?, by Máirtín de Cógáin and Brian Desmond, first produced in Cork, Ireland, in 2007. Thailand is both documentary play and metaphor: documentary in that it dramatizes an analysis of perspectives expressed by Irish sex tourists, and metaphor in the way that this analysis reflects the hysterical electioneering (from both government and media) during the 2007 Irish general election which saw Fianna Fáil’s Celtic Tiger government elected for a third term. A reflection on practice, this essay uses postcolonial and narrative theory to discuss Thailand as an act of performance which deploys the latitudes of epic storytelling to interrogate Irish attitudes to citizenship, both national and global. It discusses ways in which Thailand interrogates Celtic Tiger Ireland’s expedient self-narratives, including those of wealth as moral currency, the disposable foreign “other,” and the anti-dialectical narratives of the Irish government (and its media allies). First produced in 2007, shortly before the Irish economy went into freefall, Thailand documents an affluent Ireland’s critical disengagement with the contradictions of prosperity or, after Jerome Bruner, its apparent inability to narrate “itself” as “other.” This essay considers how Thailand’s dramaturgy exposes some of these contradictions and, through epic storytelling, both performs and exposes an apparatus of global domination. 2024-12-18T13:11:25Z text application/pdf https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss21/24 info:doi/10.13185/1656-152x.1520 https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1520/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n21_2022_2013_202014_5D_205.3_ForumKritika_Desmond.pdf Kritika Kultura Archīum Ateneo storytelling; seanchaí; sex tourism; epic theatre; citizenship; folk narrative
institution Ateneo De Manila University
building Ateneo De Manila University Library
continent Asia
country Philippines
Philippines
content_provider Ateneo De Manila University Library
collection archium.Ateneo Institutional Repository
topic storytelling; seanchaí; sex tourism; epic theatre; citizenship; folk narrative
spellingShingle storytelling; seanchaí; sex tourism; epic theatre; citizenship; folk narrative
Desmond, Brian
Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?
description This essay is a reflection on the play, Thailand! What’s Love Got To Do With It?, by Máirtín de Cógáin and Brian Desmond, first produced in Cork, Ireland, in 2007. Thailand is both documentary play and metaphor: documentary in that it dramatizes an analysis of perspectives expressed by Irish sex tourists, and metaphor in the way that this analysis reflects the hysterical electioneering (from both government and media) during the 2007 Irish general election which saw Fianna Fáil’s Celtic Tiger government elected for a third term. A reflection on practice, this essay uses postcolonial and narrative theory to discuss Thailand as an act of performance which deploys the latitudes of epic storytelling to interrogate Irish attitudes to citizenship, both national and global. It discusses ways in which Thailand interrogates Celtic Tiger Ireland’s expedient self-narratives, including those of wealth as moral currency, the disposable foreign “other,” and the anti-dialectical narratives of the Irish government (and its media allies). First produced in 2007, shortly before the Irish economy went into freefall, Thailand documents an affluent Ireland’s critical disengagement with the contradictions of prosperity or, after Jerome Bruner, its apparent inability to narrate “itself” as “other.” This essay considers how Thailand’s dramaturgy exposes some of these contradictions and, through epic storytelling, both performs and exposes an apparatus of global domination.
format text
author Desmond, Brian
author_facet Desmond, Brian
author_sort Desmond, Brian
title Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?
title_short Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?
title_full Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?
title_fullStr Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?
title_full_unstemmed Global Theme, Local Form: Testimony, Storytelling and Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It?
title_sort global theme, local form: testimony, storytelling and thailand: what's love got to do with it?
publisher Archīum Ateneo
publishDate 2024
url https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss21/24
https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1520/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n21_2022_2013_202014_5D_205.3_ForumKritika_Desmond.pdf
_version_ 1819113711128805376