Northern Ireland is a Province of the UK which has a very troubled history of strife mainly about whether it should be reunited with Ireland or still be part of Britain. It’s fractured politics have for years been led by an ultra-conservative Protestant Party the DUP. During the UK PM Theresa May’s recent minority government it was the DUP’s 10 MP’s that propped her up and kept her ii power for as long as she could cling on to it.
DUP”s Leader Arlene Forster a self professed ardent homophobe took advantage of the stranglehold power she had over PM May to stop the UK legalising same-sex marriage in the Province even though the rest of the British Isles had enjoyed that right for some time. If Forster had her own way completely she would have the N.Ireland LGBTQ Community stripped of all their Rights.
When May’s Government collapsed the British Government on 22nd October 2019 finally extended same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland which was a great cause for celebration. As part of that, in a quiet corner of east Belfast, a radical theatre group was in the process of creating the world’s first ever ‘documentary opera’.
Led by enigmatic artistic director Conor Mitchell, The Belfast Ensemble were taking every homophobic phrase said by DUP politicians over the past 40 years, and putting it to music, verbatim. The opera is called Abomination, after the infamous Iris Robinson phone call to the Stephen Nolan Show where the then Health Minister of Northern Ireland described homosexuality as shamefully wicked and vile, live on air. The full-length opera investigates the power of language in the hands of politicians, and the damage it can do when used irresponsibly.
Queer Belfast filmmaker Nicky Larkin (who we have featured before for his film Cherie, Me and HIV) made a documentary that follows The Belfast Ensemble’s progress from their first week of rehearsals in a church in east Belfast, right through to their sold-out performances in the Lyric Theatre.
With rave reviews we were hoping that the people at Northern Ireland Screen who funded the movie would make it available globally …….and they may still do. But meanwhile here is the first preview of the documentary which is to have its premiere in Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast on Thursday 26th March presented by Imagine. The Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics. It will be followed by a Q & A with Larkin and Matthew Cavan and other members of the cast.
https://queensfilmtheatre.com/Whats-On/Abomination
Labels: 2020, documentary, Matthew Cavan, Nicky Larkin, Northern Ireland
