Nine Eleven memories linger for Irish in New York

Even now, a decade on, Honor Molloy won't look at pictures or films
about the 9/11 attacks.

"I just don't," she says, "I want my own memories of it."

The Dublin-born playwright, who moved to the US in 1969, was living in
the shadows of the Twin Towers in 2001 - just three blocks north on
Greenwich Street.

She can recall going for a jog that morning, passing the flow of people
coming off ferries and out of subways on their way to work in the World
Trade Centre.

Many of them would never go home.

She was in the elevator of her building when the first plane struck, but
was out in the street with her partner and neighbours as the second
tower was hit.

"It was an explosion of orange. It was insane." she recalls.

"There was no frame to this experience. This was not a TV show. Time
compressed and expanded. There was no end. There was no narrative. I
remember the fear."

An overheard conversation sticks out in her mind - between a young
mother and her five year old child.

The boy pointed up and said: 'Somebody jumped'.

The mother said, 'No they didn't. It's just glass'.

Then, later when people were jumping, the boy said: 'Those buildings
could fall'.

The mother looked at her son, and reassured him: 'No they couldn't."

Like everyone else in Lower Manhattan that day, Honor was evacuated from
her home.

She remembers returning to the street where she lived the next day.

"It was like Dinosaur World. I mean, the cars were all burnt. There were
grey carcasses of cars, hundreds of them, lining Church St with ash all
over them."

Soon it became clear that they had lost people in their neighborhood,
and she noticed the loss in peculiar ways.

The normally-busy gym on her street was emptier, for example.

She plans to leave New York for the anniversary - she's going to
Pennsylvania for the weekend.

"It just hurts too much still," she says, "I can't stand sentiment."

"I don't talk about this with people. This is not something that I open
up about."

Maurice Landers, director of Failte 32, which helps new Irish immigrants
to the US, was working in Midtown when the Towers collapsed.

His first instinct, like many others, was to make his way downtown to
see if he could help.

"They were organizing volunteers, next to the courthouses, to go on
buses into the site to tend to the wounded," says Landers.

"They gave us cloths to wrap around any wounds, gave us face masks and
gloves.

"I went on one of the buses which drove through the plume of smoke that
covered the area but by the time we arrived near the site, the Army
Reserves were directing everyone away from the area.

"They knew the third building was going to fall, and were not going to
put untrained volunteers in amongst the rubble."

By then it was clear there would be few survivors.

"It was ominous to see one medical centre that had prepared for the
arrival of the wounded by erecting a canopy outside the main entrance,
housing empty stretchers and other medical equipment.

"Staff were just waiting in hope to treat people but probably realized
that no one was coming at that stage. A sad day."
Prominent Irish-American radio host Adrian Flannelly had just finished a
broadcast when news broke that the terrorists had struck.

His thoughts immediately turned to his two daughters who worked in Lower
Manhattan.

One, Eileen, had phoned him moments earlier.

She had been on a bus, about four blocks from the Twin Towers, when the
impact of the first plane knocked the vehicle on its side.

At the time, Flannelly was unaware of how serious the attacks were, and
thought his daughter was just being a drama queen.

Now, he realized the enormity of what was unfolding.

It would be 36 hours before he heard from Eileen again, and a full three
days before he made contact with his other daughter Kathleen who worked
in the area to confirm she was safe.

"It was horrific. It was awful," he says, "The uncertainty of it all."

"Take the scene: no subway, no buses, the city in lockdown. No
communications. Cellphones down. There were people who didn't hear from
their kids for ten days. This was not unusual."

Flannelly was working as an Irish community liaison officer for New
York's mayor Rudy Giuliani at the time.

In the days the followed, it soon emerged that the cops, fireman and
other first responders who died were predominantly Irish-American.

"It seemed as each day went by that it was a woefully lob-sided
percentage of the fatalities," he said.

"We still know many people who were injured, some of them quite
severely. I don't think history will even record it. Those that were
merely hurt didn't even count."
Flannelly has been in the US since 1959, and says Nine Eleven has
changed the country.

Americans feel less safe.

"That's never coming back," he says.

1st Irish Theater Festival brings cream of Irish playwrights to NYC

George Heslin, of the Origin Theater Company sits down with Vincent Murphy in advance of the 1st Irish Theater Festival which begins next week.

It's a measure of just how much the 1st Irish Festival has established itself in just four years that George Heslin, the power and brains behind it all, received 94 applications this year from theatre companies all over the United States and in Ireland, who wanted to take part.

And that doesn't even include the approaches he had from individual artists.

In the end, the cream of the bunch will be on show throughout September in theatres across New York City.

And many more of them are sure to feature in future editions of the 1st Irish.

It's the only theatre festival anywhere in the world dedicated purely to the work of Irish playwrights - even the Dublin Theater Festival features works by international writers and companies.

Not only that, but all of the Irish-penned plays on show, will be making their US premieres.

It's no wonder that even among jaded New York theatre-goers the festival generates a frisson of excitement.

Heslin, a Limerick native, who studied drama in Trinity College Dublin and treaded the boards for years as an actor, spotted in 2002 that there wasn't a huge amount of Irish theatre making it across the Atlantic.

"If you look at our history on Broadway," Heslin points out, "it has had work by probably 8 to 10 Irish playwrights over the last 40 years.

"And when you look back at the amount of playwrights in Ireland, I felt that there was an opportunity there in terms of working with a lot of the playwrights who I'd come to know in Ireland."

Heslin set up the Origin Theater, which soon gained a reputation for bringing fresh material to the US for the first time.

"Our mission was to launch European playwrights in America - not just Irish," he explains. "We were the first company in the world to produce Mark O'Rowe, we launched Enda Walsh here in America, Abbie Spallon, and a huge amount of others."

Then four years ago, he realized that his audience at Origin were hungry for even more original contemporary Irish theatre.

He set up 1st Irish with just two rules - the work had to be from a playwright born on the island of Ireland, and it must be making its American premiere.

"The festival presents work by playwrights from the island of Ireland, and in four years we've produced work by 62 Irish playwrights in 16 theatres across New York City during the month of September."

So how hard was it making a buzz in a city with so much theatre already?

"One of the first projects I came up with was a play called End of Lines where I brought five playwrights from Ireland and I put them on the subway here in New York for a week. And each playwright had to write a play inspired by each different subway line. And it was ideas like that that engaged communities," he explains.

"Playwrights are great for doing marketing and PR, and it didn't take long for word to spread, certainly among the Irish theatre community in Ireland about the festival here in New York.

"Also through Origin since 2002 we have worked with a huge amount of organizations on the ground here in the city.

"The trick about New York is that you kind of have to be here for a long time before you see how it works, and indeed meeting the right people. A lot of projects pass through New York. On any given day there are 300 theatre companies in the city, believe it or not, and you have to be around for a while before people actually believe in you and start endorsing the project."

"When I first moved here in 1994/5, it actually took me eight months to find the Off Broadway community. Because while now in New York we have fantastic buildings, just like in Ireland, in the mid-90s a lot of these well-known theatre companies were housed in the 3rd or 4th floor of buildings in derelict streets."

Heslin can also be credited with fortunate timing.

He says the facilities available in New York for Off-Broadway theatre improved dramatically during the economic boom of the early 2000s.

"When I first moved here in 1994/5, it actually took me eight months to find the Off Broadway community. Because while now in New York we have fantastic buildings, just like in Ireland, in the mid-90s a lot of these well-known theatre companies were housed in the 3rd or 4th floor of buildings in derelict streets.

"So at the time that I began this journey there wasn't a huge amount of contemporary Irish playwrights. Yes, we had the award winners, the Brian Friel's, the McPhersons, all of those big names.

"But there's a wonderful Irish website called irishplayography.com, and if you go on there, there's probably 400 playwrights writing in Ireland at the moment. And if we say each of those writers has an average ten plays, that's 4,000 plays. That's just a rough estimate.

"And that was the kind of area that intrigued me more: the new generation of playwrights. Because I had worked with a lot, like Mark O'Rowe and Enda Walsh in Ireland, and to this day that is the wave that excites me and I think that's what keeps this festival going, the new energy."

The 1st Irish has proved a springboard for many Irish artists in building their reputations here in the United States, and it offers a particular attraction for smaller Irish companies.

"Coming to New York is a big journey. We have special agreements with the unions here. We are allowed to invite theatre companies directly from Ireland, and that's a big cost saving for the Irish taxpayer and the companies themselves because they are allowed to pay salaries back in Ireland - we don't have to put them onto the high Broadway or Off Broadway contracts."

Heslin has noticed an increased interest in US audiences from the Irish theatre companies since the start of the recession.

"You know for many years, the Irish had a focus on Europe. And I was sitting here in New York for a number of years, and I was frankly amazed. And on a number of occasions I talked about how we have here 300 million people who speak English, and craving Irish culture.

"So since the downturn in Ireland we are definitely seeing a huge upsurge here in people trying to break into New York, certainly with playwrights realizing that there is so much opportunity in a country like America.

"You look at regional theatres across America like the Pittsburgh Public or the Seattle Rep - these companies have budgets of $12-15m and they're just regional theatre companies.

"Another idea with this festival is that, very often when you produce a play in New York, it does get picked up across America. We've brokered deals. For example, there's theatre companies in Washington DC, Las Vegas and when you introduce the playwright here... a lot of those companies haven't heard of these writers until they come through Origin or the Festival.

"So there's a long term gain for Irish theatre as well in that way."

"We have the great 'Cirque Legume', which is a very physical theatre piece from a wonderful company with Jamie Carswell from Sligo. That is a circus with vegetables basically and very, very funny."

This year's festival features four theatre companies from Ireland, each of which Heslin is enthusiastic about.

"We have 'A Night with George' from Brass Neck in Belfast written by Brenda Murphy and Donna O'Connor. That's a play that is set in West Belfast and it follows an evening of a woman fantasizing about a night with George Clooney.

"We have the great 'Cirque Legume', which is a very physical theatre piece from a wonderful company with Jamie Carswell from Sligo. That is a circus with vegetables basically and very, very funny.

"We have 'Bogboy' from Deirdre Kinahan. And we have 'Noah and the Tower Flower' which has been a big hit for the Fishamble Theater in Dublin."

Heslin says he's excited to introduce American audiences to these new artists.

"We had Deirdre Kinahan here last year with 'Human Cry' and this is her second visit to the festival. And we have partnered with Fishamble in the past on other projects.

"But for the majority of the playwrights this is the first time that their work has been seen in America."

The 1st Irish has secured the backing of several major sponsors including Mutual of America, the Irish government, Northern Ireland's Arts Council, Aer Lingus and the Irish Examiner USA newspaper.

The festival has also partnered with several venues and theatre companies across the city.

"We work a lot with 59E59 which is on Park Ave and 59th St, this year we are working with 78th St Theatre Lab, the Flea Theater, The American Irish Historical Society, Times Square Arts Centre, Irish Arts Center and Mint Theater among others," says Heslin.

"The key for this Theater Festival is partnering theatre companies with venues here in New York that have a high profile. It's very important because when you arrive here, you really need a network to kind of plug these organizations into. And they are relationships we've built up over the last while too."

"While this is an Irish Theatre Festival, most of our audience goers, as you can imagine in New York, are not Irish. But plugging into the correct venues for that is ever more important."

For more on the 1st Irish Festival, including a full list of shows, venues, dates and times, check out www.1stIrish.org

Hands that Rebuilt America (Irish Independent)

By Vincent Murphy at Ground Zero, New York 

Saturday September 03 2011

IN THE footprints where the Twin Towers once stood, the man responsible for the rebuild takes in the enormity of the task at hand.

"We are doing something unique for history and all of us know that," says Bill Baroni.

"The pressure to make sure we finished this on time was extraordinary. The entire world is watching to see if we do our job and open this memorial on time."

Mr Baroni, who holds dual Irish and US citizenship, is the deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey which is responsible for rebuilding the site.

The taps were not turned on in the giant reflecting pools at the new 9/11 Memorial Plaza in Lower Manhattan when the Irish Independent was given exclusive access to the site this week.

Beginning

But when water finally cascades down their giant granite walls next week it will signal a new beginning at the site known asGround Zero.

Families of 9/11 victims will be the first to see the spectacular design completed, on next Sunday's 10th anniversary of the attacks.

For the first time, there will be a permanent shrine at the place where their loved ones' lives were lost.

Mr Baroni is keenly aware of how important it was to get the memorial finished in time for the anniversary.

"What we hope is that the families who lost so much -- husbands, wives, kids -- walk out in the plaza next week and will say that we did our job with dignity, humility and honouring the people we lost," he said.

The plaza will open to the public a day after the anniversary, and is expected to host 1,500 people per hour.

The memorial is the first part of the old World Trade Centre site to reopen, but the rest of the 16 acres remains a massive building site.

Directly underneath will be the 9/11 Museum, which is due to open on Sept 11, 2012.

It goes more than 80 feet underground, and will hold many precious remnants including original steel tridents from old towers, damaged fire trucks and other mementos from the buildings.

Across the complex, One World Trade Centre, formerly known as Freedom Tower, has been rising at a remarkable rate of one storey per week in recent months.

At more than 80 floors, it's already the tallest building in Manhattan, and will stretch to 1,776 feet by the time it's complete -- taller than the original Twin Towers. Conscious that it may be a target for future attacks, Mr Baroni says it's constructed to be the "strongest office building ever built".

Publishing giant Conde Nast will occupy a large section of the tower, also known as 1 WTC, when complete.

The federal government and a Chinese bank have also been confirmed as future tenants.

Also under construction is a new transportation hub, designed by Santiago Calatrava, who was responsible for the Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin. But the opening of the plaza represents a significant milestone -- the first glimpse behind the high fence that has blocked the view of the 'giant hole in the ground' while controversy and wrangling delayed the project for years.

And now 10 years on, New York is finally ready to reclaim a piece of hallowed ground from history.

- Vincent Murphy at Ground Zero, New York

New York prepares for Hurricane Irene

On Friday August 26th, New York braced itself for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, and I reported for RTE's Morning Ireland as the city prepared for shutdown.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0826/morningireland.html

DSK sex case is 'too weak' to proceed

Here's a link to my report on the collapse of the Dominque Strauss-Kahn case on RTE's Morning Ireland, broadcast on the morning before his release.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0823/morningireland.html

EXCLUSIVE: SPEAKER CHRISTINE QUINN INTERVIEW

Speaker of the New York City Council Christine Quinn talks to Vincent Murphy about her Irish roots, her plans for marriage and whether or not she’ll be NYC’s next mayor.

On the window of her office across the street from City Hall, Christine Quinn has a copy of Ireland’s 1916 Proclamation of Independence. But it’s no valuable historical relic.

“That copy of the Proclamation actually came in a Clancy Brothers album,” she explains – you bought the record, and the proclamation was a freebie. How Irish.

“That used to hang in the kitchen in Glen Cove (where she grew up), my mother had it framed.”

Around the office are several other indicators that with Quinn, her Irish heritage is something she wears on her sleeve. Tiny figureen leprechauns dance in a circle on her mantelpiece, on the wall are photos of the City Council Speaker with Irish actor Liam Neeson in one, and Bono in another.

All four of Quinn’s grandparents were born in Ireland – three in Co Cork and one in Co Clare. “I’m 100% Irish,” she says, “Most people in the United States nowadays aren’t 100 per cent anything – which is neither good nor bad - but it makes that country very central in your household.” Her father, Larry, lived in Schull in west Cork for a time as a boy. He went to school there and made his First Communion there.

“My father once said we were so Irish we didn’t have to try to be Irish,” she smiles, “He always kinda resented those who had to try and put on airs about being Irish.” 

Her maternal grandmother, Nelly Callaghan, or Nelly Shine as she was before she married, came to the United States from Cork on the Titanic. She was one of the few female passengers on steerage to survive when the ‘indestructible” liner met its match in an iceberg in 1912. Her survival is now the stuff of legend, her grand-daughter explains. “She was quoted in a book on the Titanic as having said: ‘When the other girls dropped to their knees to pray, I took a run for it’.

From her desk, Quinn retrieves an envelope holder, which has a story cut-out from the New York Times stuck to its side. It tells of her grandmother and grandfather when they went returned to Ireland for the first time decades later. “Being a good immigrant they didn’t frame it of course, they stuck it here on this envelope holder,” she laughs, “Another copy went on a waste paper basket which my sister has.”

Christine’s parents lived in Inwood after they were married, but moved to Long Island in 1958, two years after Christine’s older sister was born. Christine was born in 1966 in Glen Cove – a diverse community that included, among others, large Italian, Irish and Polish communities. “There were three churches: St Patrick’s, St Hyacinth and St Rocco’s,” she recalls. “We went to St Patrick’s. Occasionally, my mother would go to St Rocco’s which would cause an enormous fight on Saturday night. My father referred to St Patrick’s as the one true church of God,” she laughs.

Christine’s upbringing was strictly Catholic. She went to St Patrick’s elementary school and Holy Cross High School. “I once asked my mother if I could go to Public School and she said No, and I said why? and she said ‘Because that’s the rule!’

 “I didn’t come out until I was about 25, which is not that early in one’s life.”

With religion playing such an important role in her family, it’s not surprising that dealing with her sexuality was a difficult experience.  “I think that was part of what contributed to me taking a much longer time than it takes some people to realize the truth of their sexual orientation,” she says. “I didn’t come out until I was about 25, which is not that early in one’s life.”

Christine had lost her mother to breast cancer when she was 16, so it was all the more difficult to breach the subject with her father. When she finally told him she was a lesbian, it brought major tensions. “When I told my father he said, ‘I never want to hear you say that again’.  And I said, ‘Look, I’ve done what I have to do, I’ve told you, what you do with it is up to you’. Then there was some period of time where we didn’t see each other and didn’t talk.”

This distance was particularly strange for both of them, as her father was the kind that turned up at every baseball game, every softball game, every science fair. Eventually, the love between a father and daughter won through, and his attitude evolved over time and got better. Now her father is one of her closest advisers and biggest supporters.

In his 80s, he’s still a key part of her political team and those tough times seem a distant memory. “Now, he marches in the Pride parade and uses ‘we’ sometimes when he’s talking about the LGBT community,” she smiles. “We made him join the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats. He jokes when he’s at the GLID meetings that it stands for the Gaelic League of Independent Democrats.”

It’s been an eventful few weeks for Quinn. On the Friday before we meet, she secured a deal on New York City’s budget on time – one that despite the financial difficulties included no tax increases, no threatened teacher lay-offs and no fire house closures. But even as she held the press conference to announce the success, news was coming from Albany that would bring an even bigger smile. The State Senate had passed a bill legalizing gay marriage – an issue on which she had been a leading campaigner for years.

“It was remarkable. The disappointment in 2009 was significant, when it didn’t pass. So to have it come completely full circle in a relatively quick amount of time is just amazing,” she says. “And it really happened in somewhat of an Irish way because people never lost faith, they never gave up hope, they kept working and working in a political sense and changed the landscape and changed the number of votes.”

Marriage Equality is not just a political issue for Quinn – it’s also personal. She plans to marry her partner, lawyer Kim Catullo in Spring 2012. “It’ll be a party, a celebration,” she says, although exact plans have not yet been made. “It was funny. Someone said to me: Congratulations on your engagement, and I was like… What?” she says, pointing out that they’d talked about marriage for years, it was not something that they just decided after the law was changed. “You know, we’ll be together 10 years in September. So it had passed the point of having a romantic moment with someone down on one knee, or you know a ring stuck in the middle of a chocolate mousse or something. It was just, when this happens, we’ll do it, was the operating assumption. I respect people who go to other jurisdictions and do it, but we didn’t want to do it anywhere but our home town.”

"What is more to the core of a celebration of Irish heritage than the struggle to get to be who you are, and to be free in who you are?"

Another long-running bone of contention for Christine Quinn is the continuing exclusion of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community from New Yorks’ St Patrick’s Day Parade. Is she tired talking about it? “If one can be tired of not marching, I’m tired of not marching” she says. With marriage equality now a reality, and with changes expected next year on the Parade’s organizing committee, she has renewed hope that the long running controversy can be sorted out.

“I’ve always had hope and real belief that the parade will change, sooner rather than later. But after Friday (when the marriage equality bill was passed), how could you not believe that?” she says. “Having such a diverse group of Senators vote for the Bill will help move all things that are stuck as it relates to discrimination or misunderstanding or bigotry. I think this will help, not just for LGBT people, but for all kinds of people, this law will help to dislodge those logjams. And certainly the parade is a logjam.”

I suggest to her that most people in Ireland don’t understand it, and that St Patrick’s Day has long since become a day that celebrates Irish-ness, not just Irish Catholicism. “Right,” she says, “I think most folks don’t see it that way anymore. It’s a celebration of Irish heritage. What is more to the core of a celebration of Irish heritage than the struggle to get to be who you are, and to be free in who you are? And to get to celebrate who you are in a way you want to and you believe God wants you to and expects you to? I mean, that is at the core of what hundreds and hundreds of years of struggle have been about, and unfortunately too many people to count have lost their lives for it. So to have something that is in name about Irish-ness, and say some Irish people are better than other Irish people, is just not at its core, what I believe being Irish is about”.

Quinn, despite her clear passion for Ireland, never got the chance to visit the Emerald Isle until relatively recently. Her first trip to Ireland was in 2003, but she has been back several times in more recent years, including with her father to west Cork, and Schull, the town he used to live in. “He always said it was the most beautiful place in the world but I was skeptical,” she says. “Now look, he and his brother talked about the tenement they lived in on 96^th and 1^st like it was the Taj Mahal! But Schull was just gorgeous. Beautiful.”

“Well who wouldn’t want to be the mayor of the city of New York?” 

Since becoming the first female speaker of the City Council in January 2006, Quinn has established herself as one of the most powerful figures in New York politics. She was elected as speaker for a second term in January 2010. And now most observers say she’s well placed to take over the “other” office in City Hall, once Michael Bloomberg vacates it in 2013, especially after the implosion of Anthony Weiner’s political career. 

“Well who wouldn’t want to be the mayor of the city of New York?” she says. “Some people say it’s the best job in the world. Some say it’s the second best job, after the president of the United States. Either way, it’s an amazing position. And I love this city. I’ve been honored and really, really lucky to get to serve it. And I hope that I find ways to continue to be able to serve it.”  But for now, she says she’s focused on her job as speaker, and on helping President Obama getting re-elected.

As speaker, her priority for the next 12 months is to keep the budget balanced, and help stimulate job growth. “We’ve done a lot of that in the past 12 months,” she says pointing to programs aimed at helping small businesses, and in the area of food and technology that the Council has introduced in the past year. She also points to having addressed some of the housing problems in city, from creating new affordable housing to dealing with buildings left run-down because of the economic and real estate crash.

Quinn with (R to L) author Colum McCann,  former Arts Minister Mary Hanafin, actor Gabriel Byrne, and Culture Ireland director Eugene Downes at the launch of Imagine Ireland in January 2011

Alongside all of this, Christine Quinn has been a major supporter of the Irish and Irish-American causes, whether supporting arts and culture, or economic efforts or local community projects. That’s why she’s being honored as Irish Examiner USA’s Woman of the Year at a reception in the Irish Consul’s residence this Thursday. 

“I feel very strong about my Irish heritage, so to get recognition from the Irish Examiner is very, very important to me,” she says, “I hope it’s a recognition of the degree to which I’ve tried to make the work I’ve done as an elected official very Irish work. By that I don’t mean work that has only helped Irish people. But I mean work that’s infused by hard work, and a sense of pride and sense of faith and sense of the importance of community, and communities being allowed to have the freedom to express themselves, and people having opportunity to work and be with their families and live the Irish-American dream, whether or not they are Irish-American”.

“You know, also being the first female Speaker of the City Council, I think any moment where you can have a Woman of the Year in any community is important. So I feel honored to be one.  Because I think even though its 2011 and women have risen to great heights, there are still challenges for women out there. So to have moments where we can remind young girls that they can be anything they want as long as they work hard and never give up is great.” 

This feature first appeared in Irish Examiner USA of July 5th 2011

POP UP PIANOS

Art project puts pianos on the streets of New York

Vincent Murphy reports on a new public art project in New York which aims to bring music to the masses

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0627/morningireland.html

Celebrations at Ground Zero as Bin Laden Killed by US Forces

As news broke that the world's most wanted terrorist had been killed by US forces in Pakistan, spontaneous celebrations erupted in Washington and New York.

At Ground Zero, site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center's twin towers, thousands cheered.

I went down to the site to speak to some of those involved, and you can hear my a vox-pop of revellers, and my report on RTE Radio 1's John Murray Show at the following link.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thejohnmurrayshow/

(scroll down to the bottom of the page to the May 01st section)

Long Island Serial Killer - RTE's World Report

This week, I contributed a radio essay to RTE's World Report show on the continuing hunt for the so-called Long Island Serial Killer.

After the gruesome discovery of ten sets of human remains on beaches on Long Island, police suspect one killer is behind at least four of them.

You can listen to my take on it all at the following link (my piece begins about four minutes into the show):

http://www.rte.ie/news/player.html?worldreport#programme=World%20Report

[Broadcast on RTE World Report April 17th 2010]

Ireland's Man in New York: An interview with Noel Kilkenny, Consul-General

For just over seven months now, the Irish Consul General in New York, Noel Kilkenny has been doing his utmost to get to know you. If you haven’t met him yet, it’s not for the want of trying on his part.

The County Clare native, and his wife Hanora, have been attending as many Irish community events in the Tri-State area as it’s physically possible to fit into their schedule - and loving every minute of it. “My priority for my first few months here was to get to know and get known by as many and as broad a spectrum of the Irish and Irish-America as possible,” he told me during an exclusive interview at his office on Park Avenue this week. “In a sense that was both difficult and easy. The difficult part is that it takes so much time – it’s literally night after night after night. But in another sense it’s easy. I went to everything humanly possible. There was no prioritization in that. It was just that if there was a gap in my diary and I got an invitation, I went to it.”

One day, Noel was talking to very important executives making very important multi-million dollar decisions about whether to invest in Ireland or not. And maybe later that same day, he’s meeting people who moved here in the 40s and 50s, who are continuing to do tremendous work in the Irish community. He loves the variety.

“Literally, in the space of a few hours, you are going to see and engage with two entirely different forms of Irish America...New York is, in a totally different way, the most exciting post I’ve ever been in.”

And that’s saying something.

Noel Kilkenny, 58, is a career civil servant, who has one of the most interesting backstories you’re likely to hear. He was posted in China during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and headed up an EU mission in Bosnia in the late 90s as the war there ended and the Dayton Peace Agreement was beginning to be implemented.

China is now a global player, but in the period from 1985 to 1989, when Noel served there, there far fewer foreigners in the country than there are today. While Ireland enjoyed good cultural relations with Beijing – the Chieftains were especially popular – only a few brave companies had been making efforts to break the market. When the protests in Tiananmen Square turned violent in June 1989, with government troops killing up to 800 of their own people, Noel was tasked with locating any Irish there and getting them to safety. “The main problem in all these situations is always information,” he recalls, “What is happening? We had about 30 Irish in and around Beijing. Some of them were students, some were teachers in the various universities. After the initial events in Tiananmen, they were cut off. There was a lot of concern. Was it going to get worse?”

He gathered all of them together in the compound where the Irish embassy is based, and flew them out to safety, including his wife and kids. He himself remained behind. “My wife and two kids were evacuated to Hong Kong. She turned on the television in Hong Kong and  by then they had pictures that some of the foreign journalist had gotten out of what had been going on, not just in Tiananmen itself but in neighboring streets. She was actually more scared, in a sense, when she got there and she realized just how bad it had been in certain places. And also obviously concerned for me, because I stayed on.”

The other major professional challenge for Noel, was in 1996, when he was posted to Bosnia ahead of and during Ireland’s presidency of the European Union. One of the duties of the presidency, was to take over the running of many EU institutions, one of which at the time was the EU’s Monitoring Mission in Bosnia. “When I arrived, the war was over. The war ended with the Deyton Peace Agreement and that was around November. I arrived in in January with six months to prepare, and then six months of the Irish presidency. But even though the war was over, Sarajevo was still under siege, because under the terms of Dayton, the Serbs didn’t have to lift their siege of Sarajevo until the 19^th of March that year.”

It was a massive mission, even just in terms of the numbers involved. Ireland’s biggest embassy in London has around 80 staff. The mission in Bosnia at the time counted 180 ex-patriot EU personnel and another 360 locals. For a diplomat, the logistics of managing all that was a big challenge. He also oversaw a change in the role of European forces on the ground in Bosnia, from one of a war footing reporting troop movements, to a more political level of reporting. “They were good at what they were trained to do, which was military reporting, on troop formations and atrocities and so on. But now we needed them to report on issues of interest to the international community from a political perspective. And also for the International Court of Justice in The Hague because inevitably prosecutions started to flow and our people were plugged in on the ground. So it was a challenge, I enjoyed it.”

You might think that a posting to the Big Apple would be boring in comparison to all that, but Noel says he’s enjoying the scale and breadth of Ireland’s relations with the US. “There is an energy in New York anyway, even if you are just here as a tourist. Add to that the energy we get from all the events we go to. For me it’s professionally challenging, professionally interesting. Hanora is really loving it too. The great thing about our career is that your partner is part of the job. And that’s a positive. Some people might think, oh but isn’t that a negative then, they’re unpaid servants of the State? But no, we view it as a positive.”

The couple clearly love meeting new people, and show no signs of fatigue. “People actually laugh at us. You go to events and people understand that you may need to slip away after an hour. Often we’ll say, ‘Listen, we’ll stay only for an hour’ - We’ve never achieved it.  Because everything you go to, you meet someone of interest or you hear something of interest. There is something about the energy here. People positively want you to succeed and they want to work with you at succeeding. There’s a welcoming, I mean in a real sense. There is a great warmth, and not just among the Irish and Irish Americans obviously, but among Americans with no connection to Ireland, there is a positive curiosity.”

Noel and his wife Hanora regularly throw open their home to host events. The spectacular Manhattan apartment, which has amazing views of the city, has hosted events ranging from arts launches to business meetings. “It’s a State asset,” Noel says, “And it should be used to maximum degree possible. The night before last we had close on 90 lawyers there for Arbitration Ireland. In two weeks’ time the Irish Film Board are coming out here for the Tribeca Film Festival, we’ll be holding an event in the apartment for that. In May, Queens University Belfast are having an event out here, we’ll be having that in the apartment. The Ancient Order of Hibernians will be celebrating the 175^th anniversary of the organization in the US and I’ll be having an event there on May 20^th.

Luckily, their two dogs are also very welcoming of guests.

To get away from it all Noel enjoys a round of golf, or just watching sport in TV, especially American Football. Their two children are now grown up – their daughter works as an aid specialist for the Irish embassy in Mozambique and their son is a film editor in Dublin. Although not directly involved in the preparations for it, he says he’s hugely interested in how the Obama visit to Ireland goes next month.

As a civil servant, Noel’s positing was unaffected by the recent general election in Ireland, although the new government is keen to use its international team of diplomats to maximum affect at this difficult time. “To imply that nothing changes is to imply we run the system and we don’t,” he explains. “Two things happen after an election. One is we educate ourselves on the policies of the incoming government, and we provide briefings for them on basically how we have done things in the past and how they might want to change things in the future." The new government has summoned all the ambassadors and consuls general home at the start of June for a major briefing. “It’s not so much that we’ll get our new marching orders but we’ll certainly get what they want of us going forward.  The election is almost a fresh mandate for us as well.”

Noel says his priority in the period ahead will be to maintain the contacts he has made and broaden them further. He says he’s conscious that he is not just Consul General for New York City, but for the Tri-State area plus Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia. “I’ve been down to Pennsylvania a few times but I’d like to go there more often,” he says, “I’d like to go more to upstate New York, where there are very strong Irish communities. I want to continue that reaching out to Irish and Irish-American communities.”

Having worked in the embassy in Washington during the 1990s, Noel was familiar with the strength of the Irish American community, but he admits to being impressed by the level of engagement of younger generations of emigrants with organizations like the IBO-NY and IIBN. He also professes huge respect for the work done by longer established centers. “What’s great to see, you go to somewhere like the Aisling Centre,” he says, picking one example. “They run a weekly service into the city to bring food and other items to the homeless of Manhattan. I asked them, how many Irish were among the people they were serving. And they’ve come across very few Irish. That’s not the point. There are homeless people and they see it as something they want to contribute back to this city.”

“There are a lot of great things going on in this city,” he smiles.

Gilmore pledges to pursue E3 visa for Ireland

Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore raised the prospect of a bilateral visa arrangement between Ireland and the US during a meeting with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in Washington on Friday. Mr Gilmore, who is also Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade in the new Irish government, has pledged to pursue the option of an E3 visa for Ireland.

Australia is currently the only country with the specialty work visa in place, but Irish-American immigration reform lobbyists are seeking to have it extended to Ireland. They made their case to Minister Gilmore during a meeting in New York last week. The Labour Party leader acknowledged that comprehensive immigration reform in the US is “on the back-burner” for now, but said he intended to deal with other issues affecting

“First of all the people who have been here for quite some time, many of whom would qualify for a visa but are not able to access that because they have to go back home, and are not sure if they get back in. That has to be addressed,” he he told me at  meeting in the Irish consulate on Wednesday last. “Secondly, there is the issue of pursuing the idea of the E3 visa. That’s something that we intend to do and we will work with the Irish American organizations in progressing that.”

Mr Gilmore’s visit to New York included meetings with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and City Council speaker Christine Quinn.  Mr Gilmore reviewed the St Patrick’s Day parade, and attended an event organized by Enterprise Ireland in which Irish high-tech companies met with leading IT companies in the US. He also addressed a meeting of the Ireland-US Council, and held talks with leading Irish-American business networks and figures.

He was keen to reassure US investors that Ireland’s corporate tax rate would remain unchanged at 12.5%. “I want to be absolutely clear on this,” he said, “The Irish government is determined to retain our 12.5% corporate tax rate. Certainty about our corporate tax rate is very important to business, companies that are considering investing in Ireland and the new government is determined that we will retain that.

He said he had not been surprised that the issue had been raised by France and Germany at recent EU talks, but said President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel were simply “responding to their own domestic political environment”. He said he was confident Ireland could withstand the strong Franco-German pressure on the issue, despite its desire to achieve a better deal on the EU/IMF bailout.

“I think it’s important we don’t see the renegotiation as an exercise in conflict between ourselves and other member states. The renegotiation of the package is about ensuring that it works, that the Irish economy is enabled to recover. That’s obviously good for Ireland, but it’s also good for the rest of the European Union and Eurozone in particular.” Mr Gilmore said it was “an exercise in working together” in the Eurozone’s collective interest and not one that necessitated confrontation.

On the issue of a consolidated tax base being proposed by the European Commission, Mr Gilmore said the proposals were up for discussion but it was “very early days”. The idea of a consolidated tax base is being resisted by Ireland, amid fears that it would lead to a change to our corporation tax through the back door.

The American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland has backed the Irish government’s opposition to the consolidated tax base proposed by Brussels. There are almost 100,000 people employed in Ireland today directly by over 600 US firms, and they are worth around €3bn to the Exchequer.

Camarata at Carnegie: Barry Douglas brings his Orchestra to NYC

World-renowned pianist Barry Douglas speaks to Vincent Murphy, ahead of his orchestra Camerata Ireland’s performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall next weekend.

Not every group can boast having the Queen of England and the President of Ireland as its joint patrons.

But Elizabeth II and Mary McAleese have both lent their seal of approval to Barry Douglas and his collection of fine Irish musicians. Camarata Ireland has been touring the globe since it was established in 1999, showcasing talent that is something of a hidden secret in its home country.

“While it’s rightly known for things like U2, the Chieftains, theater and poetry and so on, Ireland is not that well known for classical music,” says Douglas. “I thought the standard of musicianship was so fantastic, that surely if we put a few of our Irish musicians together they could form something really fantastic.”

And that’s just what Douglas did.

Camarata Ireland is an orchestra bringing together talented musicians from the whole island of Ireland. Most of them are young, in their 20s and 30s, but it’s not a youth orchestra, and there are also several established and accomplished members. But Camarata is also about more than music. It brings together musicians from across the political divide in Northern Ireland, and from North and South of the border.

“I think that musicians and artists in general can play a very important part in building bridges between communities,” says Douglas, who was born in Belfast. “I think it’s really important that artists speak up and say all the positive things that are already there. It’s not even creating anything new, there are so many positive things that have happened, and I think we as musicians can play a small part in that as well.”

It was this ambition that caught the eye of the two heads of State, Queen Elizabeth and President McAleese. “That was an acknowledgement and an approval in a sense. They saw that we are trying to understand, trying to create a bit of harmony in a musical sense and a social sense that they approved of it. It was and still is an amazing privilege to have both of them on board.”

The orchestra enjoys a busy touring schedule and has played China, Poland, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany. It was the first Irish classical music ensemble to play Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. They will appear at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on March 5^th, on the first stop of its fourth US tour. They will also visit Nashville, Tennessee; Carbondale and River Forest, Illinois; Carmel, Indiana and Winter Park and Sarasota, Florida during this visit to the United States.

And Barry Douglas is planning to treat audiences to “a nice mix”.  “We didn’t go for just a solid classical program. I wanted to highlight the Irish nature of the orchestra,” he said. “We are not pretending to be the Chieftains or anything, but I think there is something we can do to express our culture in our particular kind of style.”

The program includes two John Field’s Nocturnes (#1 and #5), which were written for piano, but which Douglas has arranged for piano and orchestra. There will also two Mozart pieces – Porgi Amor from the Marriage of Figaro, and Piano Concerto No 23 in A Major. And there will also be a unique opportunity to hear Bunting’s Druid Dances. “In 1792 there was a huge harp festival in Belfast, organized by a guy called Bunting,” explains Douglas, “and he wrote down all the old Irish melodies. The harpists came from all over Ireland. I’ve incorporated five of those into a set of a suite of dances, from a lamentation to a planxty to a lullaby. I’ve orchestrated that for the orchestra as well.”

The tour also features Ireland’s internationally acclaimed soprano Celine Byrne as a guest artist, and audiences can look forward to renditions of My Lagan Love, Carrickfergus and Last Rose of Summer. Byrne has collaborated with all the modern greats like Jose Carrerras, Roberto Alagna and Andrea Bocelli. “She is fabulous. We worked together a couple of years ago with the National Symphony of Ireland for RTE Television and I was so impressed with her poise and her ability to transcend all sorts of styles,” says Douglas.

Byrne and Douglas both represent the cream of Ireland’s classical music talent. Douglas has enjoyed a major career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. He is in demand across the world and has performed with such leading orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and all the major London orchestras. The 2010-11 season includes his return to the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, and solo performances in Germany, Ireland, Britain, France, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Italy, Singapore, China, Thailand, Holland, Spain and the US. He will return to the Proms in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra to perform the premiere of a new concerto written for him by Kevin Volans in celebration of his 50th birthday. 

Despite the hectic schedule, he remains passionately committed to Camarata Ireland, and showcasing the phenomenal talent of Ireland’s classical musicians. “The following for Irish traditional culture is very strong, and rightly so,” he says. “But I think some of these musicians deserve to be recognized by a broader public – be that an international public, Irish-American public or Irish public at home. We need to treasure our own musicians, and our own people that achieve something, and make sure they have a name abroad as well.”

Julie Feeney’s Impossibly Beautiful US Dream

Quirky and original, the award-winning  Julie Feeney is about to bring her musical styling to America for the first time, writes Vincent Murphy.

AS anyone who watched last week’s Grammys knows, the crazier the better when it comes to fashion if you’re a pop star. From Lady Gaga’s arrival inside an egg, to Ceelo Green’s feathered peacock outfit, you’ve got to have something to make yourself stand out in today’s music world.

In the case of Ireland’s Julie Feeney, who is about to embark on her debut US tour, it’s hard not to notice that she’s wearing a house on her head. A tiny multi-colored house.

“I had a tree house painted in specific colors in a garden in Galway for the photo work on my album (Pages)” explains Feeney, who hails from Athenry. “Sharon Costello Desmond painted it for me. Then when I progressed to doing live shows, I wanted that magical fairytale world brought into my live performances. So I had a replica of the house made into a hat (by Kim Gilbert, of Irish designers Attack on Humans).”

She now wears the headpiece at all her live performances. Photographers couldn’t get enough of the hat at the launch last month of Imagine Ireland in New York, and several other journalists asked me “Who’s the woman with the house on her head?” The hat was in evidence again, the following week when Julie performed a short set at Joe’s Pub at Astor Place as part of the annual performing arts showcase APAP/NYC. But the audience was taking notice of more than her choice of milliner.

Feeney, and her surprisingly large cast of supporting musicians and singers, are a fascinating live act. Her beautiful singing is combined with a captivating, sometimes manic stage presence. She’s not afraid to get out into the audience and bring the performance right to their tables. Some were bewildered, others captivated. No-one was bored.

Feeney returns to the East Village venue on March 9^th, as part of her first ever nationwide tour of the United States. “It’s fantastic,” she says, “I just feel this is going to be a great year.” Feeney will play 19 venues across the States over the next few months. 

She’s already a critical darling in her home country. Her first album 13 Songs won the Choice Music Prize in 2006, and her second Pages was also nominated in 2009. She writes, composes and produces all of her own work – releasing her last album on her own record label Mittens. She’s been invited to orchestrate and perform her own music for many orchestras, and her song “Impossibly Beautiful” was used for a high profile TV advertisement (VHI) in Ireland.

“It’s nice to be coming here a little more established, rather than a complete unknown.” she says, acknowledging that it would have been very difficult to make a mark in the US if she had tried it any sooner. “It’s nice having two albums, and to be performing a variety of different types of set-ups. Because I’ve tried all of this out before. It’s not that Ireland is practice in any way, of course, but it’s interesting now that I feel that, I’ve room to play with much more. I can pick any number of pieces to do now, whereas I wouldn’t have had that freedom if I had decided to come to America earlier.”

She thoroughly enjoyed her set at Joe’s Pub, remarking that the audience seemed to be really into what she was doing. “I’m not a typical pop artist. Because I compose for orchestras, I’m not ‘indie’ really, not a regular singer-songwriter. My audience is a bit different to that.” She’s been the South-x-Southwest rock showcase (“wonderful and amazing but a very different kind of world to mine”) before, and thinks Imagine Ireland is a better fit as a showcase for her talents. “My audience crosses into theater-goers as well as music lovers, classical as well as tradition. So this is exactly the right kind of pitching for who I am as an artist.” 

The highlight of her career so far was a 10-minute standing ovation she received at the end of a recent performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in front of a sell-out 1,200-strong crowd. “To fill the National Concert Hall was amazing,” she said. She’s now hoping to carry some of that enthusiasm with her across the Atlantic as he makes “a crucial step” in her career.

Julie was a professional choral singer for five years, and toured all over the world with various ensembles. But this is her first time in America with her own show. She has not released any of her music in the United States to date and is going to use her tour as a springboard. “The whole notion of releasing albums has changed so much now,” she says, “A release before meant one thing, but now it’s very different. I think the whole idea of presenting something with punch is only possible with a huge amount of money. When that isn’t there I think momentum is the most valuable thing you can have,” she says. 

Touring too is expensive, she explains, especially if you want to present your work in the way it should be. “You don’t need any luxury. You just need to be able to get there, particularly with flights and travel because America is so big.” She’s grateful to be getting support from Imagine Ireland – but is under no illusion that she herself needs to make the most of it by launching her album alongside the tour. “My launch is about leading with the ‘live’ – as opposed to the traditional model before, where an album is out on the seventh of March and there is a whole load of promotion around it. “I think it’s a great time now to be able to lead your launch with natural momentum.”

She plays FathomCreative in Washington DC on February 28^th, Club Passim in Cambridge, Mass. on March 07^th and Joe’s Pub, New York on March 9^th. After that, there are 16 more dates around the US. She’ll be releasing both “13 Songs” and “Pages”, digitally at least, in the US in the coming weeks.

The Truth about Bloomberg’s ‘Drunken Irish’ joke

If anybody had a problem with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech to the American Irish Historical Society last Wednesday, they certainly didn’t make it clear on the night.

Board members of the American Irish Historical Society and St Patrick’s Day Parade organizers happily posed for photographs with Mayor Bloomberg in the minutes after his speech, according to a number of people who attended the event.

“If some-one was ticked off with the joke, they didn’t show it and there are photographs to prove it,” said radio host Adrian Flannelly who was master of ceremonies at the event. He says once Mr Bloomberg had concluded his comments, he was surrounded by people wishing to have their photographs taken with him, or have their books signed for about thirty minutes.

“There was no reference whatsoever by anybody to the joke,” said Flanelly, “I can tell you first hand: nobody said it. Not a single person. There couldn’t have been anyone who took offence because if they did, they would have said something, instead of pushing each other out of the way to get photos taken with the mayor.”

Yet, the mayor’s ill-judged joke sparked a major controversy, covered by all the main news media here in the US, and in Ireland and the UK. Mr Bloomberg was attending the launch of a book celebrating the 250^th anniversary of the St Patrick’s Day Parade, written by historian John Ridge and Lynn Bushnell.  Adrian Flannelly, as MC, had been exchanging jokes with each of the speakers and when Mr Bloomberg was about to be introduced, he was informed that the Mayor had just bought a book with cash from his own pocket downstairs.

Adrian Flannelly

Flannelly joked that it was unusual to see “people in this neighbourhood putting their hands in their pockets” and asked if the Mayor had paid his sales tax. It was in the context of this back-and-forth joking that the Mayor made his ill-judged remarks. “I live in the neighborhood here, right around the corner,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “Normally when I walk by this building there are a bunch of people that are totally inebriated hanging out the window.”

The remarks drew mixture of laughs and groans from the crowd of around 100. “I know that’s a stereotype of the Irish,” he continued, “but nevertheless, we Jews from around the corner, think this.”

“It has been taken totally out of context,” says Adrian Flannelly, “It was a crappy joke, but no worse than others the politicians usually make in these type of situations when they are trying to be one of the lads, one of us. He was spurred on by the slagging and joviality that was going on at the time.”

Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg’s speech continued with his attempts at humor, saying that he was glad St Patrick’s Day was on a fixed date, not like Columbus Day, and a joke about the Metropolitan Museum of Art – something like “I don’t know who lives in the house across the street. They have a lot of art but not a lot of furniture”

The remarks went largely un-noticed at first, because the event was not widely covered by the media. But an opinion piece by Irish Voice publisher Niall O’Dowd on his Irish Central website described the remarks as bizarre, and said they had outraged some of those he spoke to at the event. New York news media began to take notice.

“We don’t get offended that easily, believe me,” Niall O’Dowd told Fox 5 television news, “But last night was particularly exceptional, I thought. It was way too far over the top.” Mayor Bloomberg apologized for any offence his remarks had caused. “I apologize,” he said, “I certainly did not mean to offend anybody.” But that did not stop the story from going global.

It was the lead story on the front page of both of New York City’s tabloid newspapers on Friday morning.

“Irish Stew” was the headline on the New York Post, “Bloomy’s Blarney” read the New York Daily News.

Chairman of the St Patrick’s Day parade John Dunleavy weighed into the controversy. “In this day and age for the mayor of the city of New York to make comments like that is outrageous and totally uncalled for,” he told the newspapers.

The story was covered by among others the BBC, and Daily Telegraph in London, CNN, the New York Times and others. Some who had attended the launch on Wednesday night told me Friday they were shocked that the remarks had ballooned into such a controversy.

Michael Bloomberg has been a strong ally of Irish Americans. He has travelled to Ireland on several occasions, and has been a strong advocate for immigrants’ rights, Northern Irish investment and other issues.

For Adrian Flannelly, who may have inadvertently sparked it all with his jokey introduction of Mr Bloomberg on the night, the reaction has been “unfortunate and way over-the-top”. “There is a good news story here that’s being lost in this,” he said, “The St Patrick’s Day parade is the longest running parade in the world bar none. In 1762, 14 years before the Declaration of Independence, someone thought this would be a good idea. And we are still doing it 250 years later. That’s what we should be talking about and instead we have this unnecessary controversy.”

Borkman at BAM: Ireland's Abbey Theatre on centenary tour to US

Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman by the Abbey

When the Abbey Theatre first came to New York in November 1911, there were riots.

The tour included, among other works, J M Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, which had stirred controversy when it debuted in Dublin just a few years earlier. It was about to do the same here.

Protests were organized by Irish-American Catholic organizations, which resulted in eggs being pelted at the stage and even arrests. But Lady Gregory, one of the Abbey’s founders, had a plan. She was in the audience on the first night, and she got in touch with her good friend Theodore Roosevelt, the former President of the US, and implored him to come see the show.

Teddy Roosevelt

“And Teddy Roosevelt did come the second night,” explains Fiach MacConghaile, current director of the Abbey, “He was applauded on the way in.” The audience was much better behaved on the second night, and at the end of the performance the former president took to the stage. “He exalted and commended the Abbey for bringing Playboy of the Western World to America,” says MacConghaile.  

The controversy translated into full houses for the Abbey on their tour, which lasted six months and included 20 different plays. It counted among them works by WB Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, J.M Synge and others. As well as New York, the Abbey performed in Boston and Philadelphia and other centers like Scranton, Champagne, Illinois and Albany.

The tour was a success and helped foster an international reputation for Ireland’s fledging national theater. “It was an extraordinary moment in the history of the Abbey,” says MacConghaile, who explains that the Abbey was motivated to come to the US because it was running out of money. Annie Horniman, one of its founding patrons, withdrew her money after six years of support.

 “The Abbey had to look to America to survive because it had no funding from the State (state funding did not arrive until the 1920s),” says MacConghaile, “So it built a relationship with the diaspora and also with cities around America. To this day I can go to almost any city in the US, and when I mention the Abbey Theatre, they know it. It’s now part of the historical fabric of the relationship between Ireland and the US.”

One hundred years on, the Abbey is touring the US once more.

Lindsay Duncan

Its production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman, a new version by Frank McGuinness is currently playing at BAM Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn. The family drama, which revolves around a morally corrupt banker, stars three of the theatre world’s shining lights Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw and Lindsay Duncan. “It was well received in Dublin,” says Lindsay Duncan, who says it’s thrilling to be working with the Abbey for the first time. “It’s always exciting to take a production that has had a short run somewhere new. Hopefully, it’s grown. It’s not a particularly well-known Ibsen and perhaps even less well known here in the States.”

She acknowledges that having a jailed banker at the center of the plot is an interesting hook for an audience. “I don’t think it’s the main thing about it, but certainly because it’s about a banker who has behaved unwisely, it should have resonances here, as it did in Ireland. But of course its themes are much more universal than that, it’s about the human condition, and people and relationships.”

Bernie Madoff echoes

Executive producer at BAM, Joe Melillo says he was shocked when he saw the play in Dublin last year. “That doesn’t sound reasonable. But it was shocking to me that this play was calling on many of the implications of the Bernie Madoff scandal here,” he said. “It will absolutely compel New York audiences. They too will have a similar confrontation saying ‘oh my god, this play was written over 100 years ago?!”

BAM Harvey Theater

The play runs at BAM until February 6^th and it cements the close ties between the world famous Brooklyn Theater and the Abbey. In 1976, the Abbey brought The Plough and the Stars by Sean O’Casey to BAM, in what, at the time, was its first US tour in nearly four decades. Interestingly, John Kavanagh, who has a supporting role in John Gabriel Borkman, also starred in that production at BAM 35 years ago. The Abbey has been back to the USA at least six times since, including at BAM once more in 2002 with a production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw.

Joe Melillo says anyone in the theatre community understands the Abbey’s historic importance. “All of us who are theater students study global history and the Abbey’s place within Ireland and the global community,” he said. “What we understand is the great richness of Irish playwriting and the great reservoir of acting talent that is Irish actors.”

Centenary Tour

The Abbey’s centenary tour continues in February, with Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus embarking on a seven-week multi-venue tour that includes Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Ohio, Duke University, and Vermont. O’Rowe is one of an exciting new generation of playwrights emerging from Ireland right now. And if the Abbey’s mission 100 years ago was to build its reputation, make connections and raise money, then it’s aim in 2011 is not too different.

“It’s the same mission,” says Fiach MacConghaile, “To reconnect, build the networks, look for additional fundraising. There are two things the Abbey can do in the US. It can tell the good news story about Ireland. It can show off the best skills we have in terms of craftspeople, stage people, actors, writers – we can show off what Ireland’s good at. And what we need to do is build relationships in the US so that we can raise money for us to do our work back in Ireland.”

John Gabriel Borkman continues at BAM Theatre Brooklyn, until February 6

[This article originally appeared in the Irish Examiner USA on Jan 25 2011]