Kathleen Cawley

Kathleen Cawley is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies program. Her work looks at the proliferation of content that engages real people, events, and cultural trauma in contemporary Irish theatre. She explores the theatre that features experiences of queer people, women, institutionalized children, and indigenous language speakers, narratives erased by the cultural oppression and institutional violence rooted in Catholic Church doctrine and practice. These productions both responded to, and facilitated, widespread social change during the 2000s. The Scott Kloeck-Jenson Fellowship will allow her to work with a theatre company to be a part of the actual creation of performances like the ones she writes about. She hopes to gain insight into the nuance and empathetic environment uniquely necessary to allow a person to share their horrors and stage them, without retraumatizing themselves or others. Cawley also received a 2022 IRIS Graduate Student Summer Fieldwork Award.