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Sat 10 Oct 2009Getting beyond the shock of the new
CULTURE SHOCK:FOR A long time, but particularly from the late 1970s onwards, the Dublin Theatre Festival operated according to a fairly fixed notion of home and abroad. The home side was the unusually strong Irish tradition of literary drama, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
The festival was a showcase for the largely justified idea that Irish drama of the old-fashioned kind with a text and a playwright at its centre, had global importance. The away side was the imported avant garde. While we were showing the world the continued vibrancy of text-based drama, it was showing us the physical and visual sides of theatre. The stream of 20th century performance running through Artaud, Brecht and Brook was temporarily diverted in our direction.
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