This paper compares the cultural legacy of the all-female Charabanc with
that of Field Day, its fellow counterpart in the Irish Theatre touring
movement in the 1980s. It suggests that a conscious awareness amongst
the all-male Field Day board of successful writers and directors of what
Bourdieu has called ‘cultural capital’ is implicated in the enduring authority
of the work of that company within the history of Irish theatre. Conversely
the paper considers if the populist Charabanc, in its steadfast refusal to
engage with the hierarchies of academia and publishing, was too neglectful
of the cultural capital which it accrued in its heyday and has thus been
party to its own occlusion from that same history.
