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

The Irish workers giving Big Apple a renewed sense of hope (Irish Independent)

By Vincent Murphy

Saturday September 03 2011

IT IS the most high-profile construction project on the planet, but to the builders on site, it's just a regular job.

Scores of Irish construction workers are employed at Ground Zero, helping to rebuild the site left devastated by the fall of the Twin Towers.

"It's definitely a privilege to work here," says Willie O'Donnell (40) from Listowel, Co Kerry, who has been on site for two-and-a-half years.

"The first day you start here, you remember 9/11, where you were and everything like that.

"But you just work away and it becomes just a regular, pain-in-the-ass job!"

Mr O'Donnell works for Navillus, a Kerry company responsible for most of the concrete work on the new Memorial Plaza and 9/11 Museum.

On the day the terrorists struck the Twin Towers in 2001, he was working on nearby Canal Street and saw the giant buildings crumble before his eyes.

Rebuild

Now, a decade later, he's helping to rebuild the site they once stood on.

The attacks were also witnessed first-hand by two of his colleagues.

Jimmy O'Sullivan (47) from Dunmanway, Co Cork, was working on a high-rise on 47th Street in midtown Manhattan, when the first plane flew suspiciously low over their heads.

A colleague remarked to him: "There's something wrong", and then, "everybody just froze".

He said: "It's great to be building it back up again. It's something that you feel honoured to be involved in."

Mike Carmody (37) from Tarbert, Co Kerry, was working 30 floors up on a building project across the river in Queens.

And Michael Deere (43) from Pallasgreen, Co Limerick, was working underground across the bridge in Brooklyn on the day of the attacks.

By the time he emerged, all he could see was a cloud of smoke hanging over all of Lower Manhattan.

He has been working as a carpenter with Bovis, the general contractors for the Memorial Plaza and Museum, for five months.

"Six weeks ago, you wouldn't have thought it would ever open on time, but there's been massive progress," he said.

Working alongside him with Bovis is Niall Marshall (31) from Birr, Co Offaly.

"I am very proud of being here," he says. "A lot of American people look at this as something great -- a rebuilding that's going to bring everyone back together."

- Vincent Murphy

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

Thoughts on the David Norris Tragedy

There are so many facets to the story of David Norris’s failed presidential bid, so many issues involved that need to be teased out, that there must be some take-away lessons from it all. How we view it says a lot about our attitudes to politics, to sex, to our ethics and sense of right and wrong. I want to try to make sense of it all, because it seems to me that Ireland has lost a good president.

Even many of those who believe it was right for Norris to leave the campaign concede he would have been good in the job. So why, then, have we forced out someone like that out of the race? The whole thing leaves everyone feeling a little worse off.

I don’t like conspiracy theories. I don’t buy that he was driven out because of his sexuality, though of course it played its part. Was there an orchestrated campaign against him? Of course! But that’s called politics. That’s what you do in an election – you orchestrate a campaign against someone you don’t want to get elected. That’s not sinister, it’s the game.

What do we want from a president?

David Norris was by far the most popular candidate for president – that much is clear from successive opinion polls, even those taken after the original controversy surrounding his Magill interview. It’s not that we’ve all suddenly fallen for his west Brit charms after all these years. It’s because he was a perfect fit for what most people want in a president.

It seems to me all we want from the president – which after all is a “largely ceremonial” role as people keep saying – are a few simple things.

They need to look presidential. (I’m sorry, but for me Gay Mitchell or Sean Gallagher just don’t fit the bill.)

They need to sound presidential – someone articulate that can make wishy-washy non-political statements sound profound and important, and who we feel won’t let us down when speaking in public.

They need to have made some contribution of significance to Irish life and society over the years – we need to feel that they deserve the reward of the Aras. (Again, sorry Gay and Sean!)

And most importantly, and this is why I believe Norris was such a front runner, we want their election to say something about us as a nation.

Mary Robinson’s election showed we were ready to have a first female president. Norris’s election would have shown that we were ready to have a gay president.

A gay president

I think that, far from his sexuality being a negative for him, it was actually the biggest positive for him. We wanted to be able to say to the world – look at us, we in Ireland are now a grown up liberal social democracy capable of electing the first gay president anywhere in the world. He was popular because he represented the image of the country that a large portion of the population wanted to portray.  

Norris himself campaigned that he “did not want to be a gay president, but a president who happened to be gay”. But the reality was, the only reason he was so far ahead in the polls is that Ireland didn’t just want a president who happened to be gay, we wanted a gay president. Because it said something about us. For all his human rights work, and all his scholarly Joycean work, for most people in Ireland the name David Norris means just one thing – gay rights. We weren’t just ready for a gay president, we wanted one.

The thorny issue of pederasty

Because David Norris equals gay in Irish shorthand, his opinions on sexuality became a focus point for the media. It happens to all candidates. If Mary Davis is being interviewed, she’ll be asked about the Special Olympics, not for her views on pederasty. If Gay Mitchell is being interviewed, it will probably be our role in Europe – he’s been an MEP for a long time, hasn’t he? Sean Gallagher, your thoughts on entrepreneurship please.

But luckily for the other candidates Europe, the Special Olympics and business are not as emotive and personal an issue as sexuality. The very idea that we would even ask Mary Robinson or Patrick Hillary for their nuanced opinions on teenagers having sex would be ludicrous. But it’s an issue that Norris had to deal with because his defining public role has been steering a catholic dominated country to a more gay-friendly equal society.  

So I’m sorry David, but we must ask you – how young is too young? Mary Davis, what is your favourite Special Olympic sport? Davd, do you like having sex with younger men? Michael D, a word on how important the Arts are in Irish society? David, will you be having sex with another man while in the Aras?

Ezra Nawi

Here comes the tricky part to discuss. The statutory rape of a 15 year old Palestinian boy by Norris’s former lover Ezra Nawi.

In a strange way, it was useful for Ireland to have had the discussion earlier in the year about Norris’s Magill interview, because it laid down an important distinction – that between paedophile and pederast.  A paedophile has sex with children, a pederast has sex with post-puberty teenage boys.  Neither is acceptable in my opinion for a man in his forties or fifties, but can we at least talk about this for a minute without descending into moral outrage.

The teenager, in any of the following European countries, would be over the age of consent:

Albania (14), Austria (14), Bosnia (14), Bulgaria (14), Croatia (14), Czech Republic (15), Denmark (15), Faroe Islands (15), Estonia (14), France (15), Germany (14), Greece (15), Iceland (15), Italy (14), Liechtenstein (14), Macedonia (14), Monetnegro (14), Poland (15), Portugal (14), Romania (15), Serbia  (14), San Marino (14), Slovakia (15), Slovenia (15), Spain (13), Sweden (15)

That means, if as the Israeli court accepted the relationship between the teenager and Nawi was consensual, no court case would have arisen in any of these countries and Norris’s letter would never have been written.

Now of course, the law of each country needs to be respected – but I think it’s a point worth making. And its important to make it because tabloid headlines describing Nawi as a paedophile, or commentary comparing his actions to those of paedophile priests are just dishonest.

It’s not unheard of in the straight world for teenagers to have sex with older men or women (when it’s a woman we call her a cougar!).

Now, personally, I don’t think it’s right for an older man to be with a teenager, but I’d have a bigger problem with Norris defending Cathal O’Searcaigh, who was an obvious sex tourist.

The letter

Was Norris right to pen the infamous letter seeking clemency for Nawi? No, he wasn’t.

But I think it’s perfectly understandable that he did.  If the love of your life was heading for prison, and you thought you could make a difference by writing a letter, who wouldn’t? The words used, and the fact that Norris was making himself sound as important as possible, don’t matter. He was making the letter sound as strong as possible.

I don’t think any politician should be writing these kinds of letters to judges in any jurisdiction. Norris was wrong to do it. And it cost him his presidential bid.

But should it have? Was the crime big enough to match the punishment? And has our moralizing cost us one of the best presidents we could have had?

Have we ever asked any other candidate in any other election to reveal what letters they had written to seek clemency for criminals? This is a new standard we are setting now.

Gay Mitchell, it appears, wrote to a Florida judge, seeking clemency for a man who shot dead two people at an abortion clinic, and was facing the death penalty.

Did I miss something here?

Since when is a Double Murder a less heinous crime than pederasty?

If Norris is forced out of the race for his letter, on behalf of the love of his life, why is Gay Mitchell still in the race, given his letter on behalf of complete stranger who is a killer?

Media bias

Finally, there is now an attempt by some conservative/right commentators like John Waters, David Quinn or Kevin Meyers to say that the media went easy on Norris. That because of a “liberal” bias, the media looked the other way to Norris’s comments. They argue this would not have been the case if it was a priest that had said it.

I’ve already pointed out how the comparison to clergy is wrong. I think it’s also wrong to claim the media somehow went easy on Norris. There was a very tough series of interviews with Norris when the Magill controversy blew up – including the memorable one with Aine Lawlor on Morning Ireland. And once the letter emerged, the media were all over the story like a rash.  The very media that these commentators claim is going soft on Norris, were the ones that kept the controversy so heated that Norris’s supporters found the going too hot and pulled out.

It’s a favourite new argument of right wing commentators that somehow they are victims of a liberal conspiracy. The fact is that it is often liberals who are weak at standing up for their viewpoints. Because a liberal viewpoint by its very nature is open to other ideas, and a conservative viewpoint is usually married to some dogma. Liberals want to hear all sides of the argument including the conservative ones. Conservatives never accept they are wrong. You see it in the States all the time, where Fox or Tea Party supporters claim the media has a left-wing liberal bias, where in fact it’s their viewpoint that is one-sided. I hope the liberal forces in Ireland will keep their strength.

Aftermath

After the dust settles on the whole controversy, I think we’ll all feel a little worse about the situation.

There was no big homophobic conspiracy. There was no grand Israeli plan to knock him out of the election.  There was simply a storm that brewed from a society that still finds it difficult to discuss teenage sexuality, and a political habit of trying to wield influence over things that maybe they shouldn’t.

 If we step back from it, do we really think that Norris is not acceptable as president because of that letter? It’s a hard one. I didn’t realize how much I wanted him to be president until he was no longer in the race. How boring it all looks now. I’m hoping some new candidate will come along that can inspire us, who would represent us well, who has contributed to Irish life and society, and whose election says something about us as a country.

Of course, they will still need to get the support of county councils or 20 TDs… don’t get me started on that whole side of things…

Storm Brewing over Ground Zero Cross

You can hear a piece I did for RTE Radio on the lawsuit filed by American Atheists over the inclusion of rubble in the shape of a Christian Cross in the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

There is also an update on latest in the DSK sex assault case.


http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0728/morningireland.html