Meeting No Ordinary Woman. An Interview

This interview with historian, playwright, and curator Sinéad McCoole explores the cultural, historical, and imaginative reverberations of Brexit from an Irish perspective, foregrounding questions of memory, identity, borders, and narrative authority. Drawing on McCoole’s interdisciplinary practice – spanning historiography, theatre, exhibition-making, and public scholarship – the conversation situates Brexit within longer trajectories of Irish-British relations, postcolonial identity, and the unfinished legacies of Partition. McCoole reflects on the symbolic and lived meanings of borders, the renewed salience of the island as a shared yet divided space, and the ways in which Brexit has reactivated debates surrounding sovereignty, citizenship, and belonging, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement. The interview highlights the distinctive role of literature, theatre, and the arts in mediating political rupture, emphasising drama’s capacity to personalise historical complexity, cultivate empathy, and document change in real time. Special attention is given to women as narrators of history, the ethics of cultural memory, the significance of language and cadence in Irish storytelling, and the evolving position of Ireland within a European and global cultural framework. Ultimately, the conversation positions Brexit as a critical moment of transformation that has contributed to a renewed confidence in Irish cultural identity, while underscoring the arts’ enduring function as both archive and agent of social reflection in periods of profound political change.