PrintIt took a lot more than luck to get the 1st Irish Theater Festival up and running. The festival, which runs from September 1 to October 4 this fall, was inaugurated in 2008 by George Heslin and Origin Theater. It showcases Irish-written theater in a New York setting.
“The festival is meant to create a national crossroads for theater in which everyone is working under the banner of the 1st Irish,” says Heslin, Origin Theater’s artistic director. It includes the work of 21 contemporary playwrights in 12 venues throughout the city. The festival aims to launch a dialogue between the public and the playwright by exposing New Yorkers to modern Irish plays.
Heslin and his associates select plays that they believe will best connect American audiences to Irish playwriting, providing equal opportunities to male and female playwrights from both northern and southern Ireland. This year, says Heslin, the festival also widened the pool of prospective writers by deciding to “invite theater companies from Ireland.”
1st Irish introduces such a diverse group of Irish playwrights and companies in an attempt to appeal to a young audience. As Heslin says, “We select work to attract an audience under the age of 45. We want to have a cutting edge.” He believes that the low ticket prices and multiple venues presented by the festival will still attract youth despite the shortage of the kind of razzle-dazzle that characterizes a typical glamorous, large-scale Broadway show.
The festival has introduced many little known writers and theater companies from outside of New York to the city, like Irish playwright Bryan Delaney. He recently presented his first play, “The Cobbler,” under the umbrella of the 1st Irish. “I’m getting to work with some of the finest actors in the city,” he says of the experience. “I’m just delighted to be part of it.” Delaney was inspired to write his play after seeing “the textures of the shoes in the window of an old cobbler shop in Dublin.” Now, due to his involvement in the festival, Delaney can share his stories of Irish culture with a large, stateside audience.
“Inis Nua,” a Philadelphia-based company, is also presenting a play—“Trad,” by Mark Doherty—through the festival. Artistic director Tom Reing reflects that he has found a great deal of “cross-cultural, hybrid communication between Ireland and the United States … The Irish get a lot of American imports [from media sources], but they make them into their own.” Reing finds that the festival’s plays represent Irish culture and connect it to the United States, an idea that has been mirrored in the takeaway messages of many of the festival’s plays.
Whether or not each individual play can convey a cross-cultural message to young adults is key to the success of the festival as a whole, as both “Cell” and “Blood Guilty,” two of the 1st Irish’s productions, demonstrate.
Paula Meehan’s “Cell” is emotionally riveting. It confronts the brutal realities of poverty in Ireland as experienced by four female cellmates. From the opening scene in which a cellmate rushes onto the stage and demands to know who dared to bleed into a pail, “Cell” reeks of emotion. It’s so raw and gripping that it may even cause its audience to reflect on the effects of poverty in the United States.
“These women [in the play] are on the edge of society,” says actress Laoisa Sexton, who plays a cellmate. “They’re not criminals. Their class has put them where they are. These women are very unrepresented … This is inner-city Dublin.”
But the play proves that problems in Dublin are applicable to American cities as well. “Cell” builds a cultural bond between its American audience and its Irish subject matter, one so strong that the issues explored by the play seem almost to leave a layer of soot on audience members’ skin during the performance.
The stale sentiments expressed in Antoine Flatharta’s “Blood Guilty,” however, do not try to communicate a similar cross-cultural message. This play explores the generation gap that separates two sets of brothers, but it gives its audience no reason to care about their predicaments. The inability of the two generations to understand one another mirrors the incapacity of the play to convey meaning to a young audience.
Despite occasional missteps like “Blood Guilty,” the 1st Irish Theater Festival has launched a transnational dialogue by unifying a diverse group of playwrights and theater companies. Connecting New York City with the work of rising Irish playwrights, the festival has provided a link to a rich heritage that remains a vibrant force in the present day. When asked about possible changes for next year’s festival, Heslin says that the festival will not increase the number of plays presented in order “to preserve the quality and standards of the festival.” Perhaps in order to improve the festival, its organizers could actually present fewer plays that better present Irish narratives to young American audiences. Even so, 1st Irish has begun to write a narrative of lyrical success.