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Veronica Coburn's Without Distinction of Sex at Dublin Theatre Festival traces the legacy of Article 41 and the 1922 Constitution promise of equal citizenship for women.
Without Distinction of Sex, a new work by Veronica Coburn, is being staged at Draíocht, Blanchardstown, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival. The production takes its title from the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State, which promised that every person, without distinction of sex, would enjoy the privileges and assume the obligations of citizenship. The 90-minute piece examines what happened to that promise, particularly after the 1937 Constitution introduced Article 41, which gave a different account of women's place in the State.
The Constitutional Promise and Its Legacy
Article 41 stated that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. It committed the State, as far as possible, to ensuring that mothers should not be forced by economic necessity to work to the neglect of their duties in the home. Coburn traces the legacy of Article 41 and subsequent constitutional change.
The production examines the ways the State restricted women's lives. It is an inherently important subject matter, particularly at a time when basic rights cannot be assumed secure. But the production's approach is rather dutiful.
Close readings of legal documents accumulate over the 90-minute piece, setting out the ways the State approached questions of marriage, work, sexuality, reproduction and domestic life. The audience on the reviewed evening included President Catherine Connolly.
Testimony Music and Dance
To prevent this becoming a lecture, Coburn introduces recorded testimony, music and dance. Projected out of the darkness is a chorus of 40 or so women, whose faces appear individually and collectively, speaking and singing material drawn from the legal record.
Sibéal Davitt, a performer and choreographer whose practice combines contemporary dance with sean-nós, supplies a more personal register. She talks about dancing since childhood and about the freedom she finds in it. Her body in motion offers an obvious counterpoint to the restrictive historical laws.
Modest Demands in the Production
None of this is revelatory. We know the Catholic Church and the State severely impaired the freedoms of women, with horrendous effects that reverberated down the generations. The challenge is to make that history newly strange, or to use it to demand something more radical of the future.
Instead, Without Distinction of Sex becomes increasingly cautious in its conclusions. A chorus of women of different ages and ethnicities make declarations such as I am beautiful and I am a proud Irish woman. The production then arrives at a set of depressingly modest demands: a gender-neutral Constitution, a Department of Care, an enshrinement of democracy.
Worthwhile proposals, but earthbound ones for theatre. If this history demonstrates anything, it is that political arguments that present themselves as natural and permanent are neither. Why, then, present us with such middle-of-the-road, unobjectionable aims? Why not burn something down for the hell of it? Theatre has the freedom to go where politics cannot: into the impossible, the unthinkable, the wonderful and the absurd. Instead we are left dwelling in this worthy feeling.
Without Distinction of Sex is at Draíocht, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, until Saturday, October 3rd.
Veronica Coburn Dublin Theatre Festival Without Distinction Of Sex Article 41 Irish Constitution Draíocht Blanchardstown Catherine Connolly
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