“You’re only putting it on”

Abstract

"Colloquially within Northern Ireland, “to put on” has a variety of meanings: “to dress yourself; to fake or pretend to something” (Todd 132); and, more widely, to stage a performance. All of these meanings are at play in the use of costume in a number of postcolonial plays.1 This paper seeks to investigate how costume has been used in pursuit of a variety of postcolonial concerns in contemporary Northern Irish dramas.2 In drawing attention to this use of costume, I want to evaluate how theoretical propositions about the use of costume in performance might be operative in practice.3 To do this, I will look first at the ways in which costume signifies within Northern Irish society more generally and then at examples of strategies in the use of costume from the Northern Irish dramatic repertoire."(pg 1)