Hugh Denard

Virtuality and Performativity: Recreating Rome's Theatre of Pompey

1 TT7 alk through the narrow streets from the ancient temples in Largo X/I Argentina to the open-air market in Campo dei Fiori, enjoying the characteristic Roman patchwork of architectural gems and mediocrities as you go. At the near end of the Campo, the seventeenth-century fasade of the Palazzo Pio juts out (Plate 1), overshadowing a small courtyard to one side. Entering this courtyard you go past Pancrazios Restaurant, then follow the dark, covered passageway down a slight incline until you emerge into a sunlit street where the buildings curve around on either side in a wide crescent of faded Renaissance elegance (Plate 2). Taking out your guidebook, you discover that you are standing in the auditorium of the Theatre of Pompey-the largest and one of the most historically important and architecturally influential theatres ever built.

Seamus Heaney, Colonialism, and the Cure: Sophoclean Re-visions

In November 1990, the election to the Irish presidency of Mary Robinson heralded an overnight transformation of the iconography of State in the Republic of Ireland. Robinson was a progressive young constitutional lawyer and a brave champion of civil rights; her election to this largely symbolic role was seen by many to mark a national “coming of age.” It was certainly one of the most clearly defined and defining moments in Irish history since partition. In her inauguration speech she set the tone for her Presidency with the words: