Rebellion Series 1 & Series 2 Resistance
- Submitting institution
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Birkbeck College
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 2003
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Television RTE & Netflix
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first performance
- January
- Year of first performance
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This output comprises two drama series, Rebellion 1(2016; broadcast as The Rising in Ireland) and 2 (2019; Resistance), telling the stories of the Easter Rising (1916) and the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) respectively. The first series was commissioned to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Before beginning, I asked: is it possible to tell the story from below, conveying what it was like to live through events, not knowing the outcome? I wanted to subvert traditional nationalist, heroic, male, sacrificial narratives. To do that, I turned to first-hand testimony: newspapers, memoirs, and other evidence. My characters and parts of my plot derived from 800 witness statements in the Bureau of Military History, 1913-23. I was struck by statements by women and socialist belligerents, who went out to fight not only for a free Ireland, but also for social change. Unusually for fictional explorations of this period of Irish history, I researched Unionist points of view and those of working-class soldiers in the British Army. While these ‘lost’ voices have featured in academic histories, they have rarely been included in narrative accounts, and films / television drama series. I also researched what life was like in homes, offices and streets. I used my findings to: make strong female characters; to present a more nuanced, human portrait of a British soldier than is always possible in popular Irish drama; and to decentre known political narratives and famous figures to focus on how ordinary lives intersected with historical events and institutions, e.g. the Catholic Church.
These 2 series are the subject of an impact narrative. Series 3, Republic, is in development (2023). Each series had budgets >6M€ (Series 1 is most expensive RTÉ drama to date). They are distributed in the US by Sundance and internationally to 189 countries by Netflix.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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