St Columba’s Pageant

On 30 January 1972, a peaceful anti-internment march in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, ended when 13 unarmed protesters were shot dead by soldiers from the British Army’s parachute regiment. A fourteenth man later died from his injuries. This day became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, a defining moment in the 30-year conflict known as ‘the Troubles’.

Twenty years later Red Zone Theatre Company collaborated with Theatre of Fire and the people of Derry—Doire Cholm Cille—to create large-scale processional pieces for a day-long community pageant. The event connected the sectarian streets of the city through performances that traversed and connected significant historic locations: Saint Colmcille’s (Long Tower) Catholic Church, outside the city walls, and St. Columb’s Cathedral, the Church of Ireland cathedral within the walled city. The pageant passed through city gates that had been closed since 1973.

Red Zone artists created a large-scale, automotive, fire-spitting ‘monster’ built on a cherry picker. On the night of the performance it spat fire as it moved over a major bypass connecting the Loyalist area of Fountain to the Republican suburbs of Bogside and Creggan.

As a Protestant from the Republic of Ireland working alongside the Bogside community  I took on an Irish name for the duration of the project. At an initial meeting, the Festival Director suggested that “Whatever I do, say very little.”

As the fiery monster moved towards them spectators called out, “here comes the Machine of Death!” A collective intake of breath was taken when the ‘Machine of Death’ met the ‘Horseman of the Apocalypse’ near the site of the 1972 shootings.

Cathartic Journey

The next morning, the bus into Derry city was filled with conversations about the meeting of the ‘Machine of Death’ and the ‘Horseman of the Apocalypse’. We laughed, we cried, we shook hands. Strangers and acquaintances alike shared stories of loss. The talk was of loved ones taken by the conflict. In this moment we imagined other possibilities for worlds that made a difference to the struggle for justice. That, as the pageant moved through the streets of a divided city it redrew borders of violence, resilience and access.

Two years later the IRA declared a ceasefire.

On April 10, 1998—four years after the IRA ceasefire—the Belfast Agreement, also known as the  Good Friday Peace Agreement, was signed. This historic accord underpins Northern Ireland’s peace process, its constitutional and institutional agreements between Northern Ireland and Britain.

This was a moment when voices and visions from the streets of a war-torn city changed the course of history.