Queer Notions: New Plays and Performances from Ireland

Foreword

vii Foreword There is strength in numbers, so they say. I’ve never believed it, and I’m glad that I haven’t. Crowds wear uniforms, and we know where those outfits can lead us. Theatre is a perfect, subversive place for resisting the herd instinct. People gather there to watch in the darkness light emanating from the truth, or the masks of truth. These plays are a collection of masks, masks of many shades, all of them saying something I’m glad I’ve heard in all their defiance and despair, their sorrowful, joyous and glorious mysteries, the spite of their loving and the pleasure of their hatred , all moving like fire, warm and dangerous and inviting through the book, ending as it does with the wonderful, devastating P.S. of Panti’s letter to someone remarkably like so many of us, a line which even standing on its own, as we all must stand on our own, makes Queer Notions essential. Frank McGuinness March 2010 ...