The year is 1980. A former movie actor, Ronald Reagan, whose great-grandfather was an emigrant from the village of Ballyporeen in County Tipperary, is the newly-elected, 40th president of the United States. That same year another emigrant, Ciarán O’Reilly from County Cavan, was performing in an off-Broadway play called Summer by the Irish writer HughRead more..
In Nora Connolly’s 1935 memoir of her father, James Connolly, she mentions a play of his entitled The Agitator’s Wife, which scholars have never been able to find. A short story of the same name was recently discovered in an obscure journal in Warwick University’s library, leading University of Glasgow academics to believe it couldRead more..
The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Festival in New Ross, called “One Festival, Two Countries,” was a big success. The first half of the festival, the 19th Annual Eugene O’Neill Festival in Danville, was held throughout September 2018, and the second half, the First Annual Eugene O’Neill International Festival of Theatre, was held in New Ross October 11-14, 2018,Read more..
Dublin-born playwright Conor McPherson’s 2006 play The Seafarer opened in an off-Broadway revival at the Irish Repertory Theatre in April, directed by County Cavan native Ciarán O’Reilly. Starring Matthew Broderick alongside Andy Murray, who plays lead character John “Sharky” Harkin, the Dublin-set play explores the earthy issues of middle age, infirmity, and alcoholism intertwined amid more etherealRead more..
The Bronx girl who changed the face of Irish theater. ℘℘℘ An enigma and a shapeshifter, she changed her first name each time her life entered a new incarnation. Baptized Eleanor, she was Ellie as a child, a little beauty with a bounty of red-gold hair. Her gifts – singing, dancing, and especially acting – were supported byRead more..
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Origin 1st Irish Theatre Fest, which ran during the month of January, welcomed all those with a love of the Irish arts scene to attend any of its seven productions and nine special events over its three-week run. Among the featured productions was playwright and producer Turlough McConnell’s Ulster atRead more..
In late 1980s Ireland, commercial digital scanning was newly available, and when Dublin artist Patrick Dunning decided to scan a piece of his art – a large but simple cosmic landscape – into a one million pixel format, he came to understand his painting not just as color on canvas, but as digital code with a messageRead more..
Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett, leading Beckett interpreters, and John Minihan, the photographer who captured Beckett on film, talk to Rosemary Rogers. ℘℘℘ Samuel Beckett created the greatest body of literary work – novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and, most famously, plays for theatre, radio, and TV – in the 20th century. But the IrishmanRead more..
This January and February, a number of exciting events are happening in New York City, from a 20th anniversary revival of Edna Walsh’s groundbreaking “Disco Pigs” at the Irish Repertory Theater to a pop extravaganza presented by the Irish Arts Center, and more. ℘℘℘ “Disco Pigs” January 5 – February 18 Tickets are available forRead more..
Ireland’s Poet-Patriots: A Musical History, which premiered last year in San Francisco to correspond with the centenary of the 1916 Rising, is coming to Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral on October 12. The one-night performance will illuminate 140 years of Irish history, featuring the inspired words of 12 Irish poets and patriots set to music byRead more..