Performing Modernity

Culture and Experiment in the Irish Free State

By: Elaine Sisson, Claire Cochrane, Bruce McConachie

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eBook | 11 December 2025

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This book is an exploration of metropolitan bohemian and counter-cultural movements in theatre, design and popular culture in the Irish Free State.

Were there flappers in Ireland? Was there really a Cabaret Club in Dublin in 1926? Using photographs, theatre and costume designs, letters, newspaper accounts, novels and other historical sources, Performing Modernity?offers a wholly new perspective on metropolitan life in the Irish Free State where people listen to jazz and go dancing, watch German Expressionist theatre, are interested in Soviet design, and attend pageants, cabarets and fancy dress balls.

The early years of Irish independence are often characterised as isolated and conservative as the country recovered from the effects of the Civil War. This book argues that there was also ambition and optimism among the citizens of the new State as they embraced the promise of modernity in theatre, film and popular culture during the 1920s and 1930s.