NY's First Irish Theatre Festival

Hard to believe it hasn't happened yet, but so was George C. Heslin, artistic director of Origin Theater Company, who organized the first ever Irish Theatere Festival in NY. With such notable Broadway names as Conor McPherson and Martin McDonagh, it's shocking to think this is the first stab at it, but, hey, stranger things have happened here in the Big Apple. Running now until 28 September, nine companies will present the plays of 13 writers at five locations, including Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs (which again is surprising that it's having it's NY premiere, since I saw it in Edinburgh last century and up at Williamstown at least five years ago). Check out the NYTimes article here.

NY's International Seasonal Round-Up

With the Tonys coverage flooding the pages of the NYTimes, it’s nice to know someone is paying attention to what’s going on outside of midtown Manahttan. Once again, kudos of Jason Zinoman for shining a spotlight on international work. Here’s a little excerpt and link to the full article.

In the last year I have seen shows in Off Broadway theaters from, among other places, Argentina, Canada, England, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Poland, Russia and Scotland. New York is as much a global theater capital as ever, so why doesn’t it always seem that way?

In part it’s because the cultural world has been slowly shrinking for decades. It has been a long time since Howard Taubman in The New York Times wondered why American artists didn’t do more to welcome those from abroad. “Did they think they had nothing to learn from the visitors?” he asked in 1967 in an article about a New York meeting of the International Theater Institute, an organization designed to foster discussion within the industry.

Broadway sticks to a diet of prestige dramas from London while BAM, Lincoln Center Festival and LaMaMa E.T.C. are known for the strength of the adventurous foreign work they host. In the last couple of years a new generation of globetrotting producers, some of whom were born abroad (including Vallejo Gantner of Performance Space 122 and Peter Tear, who runs 59E59 Theaters with Elysabeth Kleinhans), has become more aggressive in pursuing international work…The result has been an excellent season for foreign shows.

Enda Walsh

Jason Zinoman has written a fantastic article on Irish playwright, Enda Walsh. Produced by the Druid Theater Co. of Galway, Walsh’s The Walworth Farce will open at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn on April 15. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing 2 of his plays in the past, Disco Pigs (Edinburgh-1998) and Bedbound (Dublin-2000), and they were outstanding.