MAJOR THEATRE FESTIVAL BOOST
InternationalfestivalwillhonourNewRosslinkstoEugeneO’Neill
A FESTIVAL honouring the New Ross area’s deep associations with internationally renowned playwright Eugene O’Neill and his actor father James has been announced for the town.
The three day festival will be held in New Ross every October, beginning next year. It will run alongside a festival named after the playwright, whose family hail from Tinnerany, which takes place in California.
Taking place a fortnight after New Ross Piano Festival and a month after the Kennedy Summer School, the festival builds on the towns’ burgeoning reputation as a cultural and arts hub which has produced world famous names.
The close bilateral partnership, reflected in the slogan ‘One Festival, Two Countries’ will feature productions of O’Neill plays in Danville, California, throughout September 2018, and in New Ross in October 2018.
AN international drama festival named after the most famous Irish American playwright who ever lived – Eugene O’Neill – will be held in New Ross every October, beginning next year.
The festival will run alongside a festival named after the playwright, whose family hail from Tinnerany, which takes place in California at around the same time of year.
The festival will attract people from all over Ireland and abroad to the town in an otherwise quiet part of the year. Taking place a fortnight after New Ross Piano Fesival and a month after the Kennedy Summer School, the festival builds on the towns’ burgeoning reputation as a cultural and arts hub which has produced world famous names.
The great Irish American playwright’s father the acclaimed actor James O’Neill, will also be celebrated in the festival of theatre which is a collaboration with the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in Tao House, Danville, California.
The festival is co-chaired by Sean Reidy, former CEO of the Kennedy Trust, together with Dan McGovern, President of The Eugene O’Neill Foundation, with Tomás Kavanagh as Festival Director, Dr Richard Hayes of WIT as Academic Adviser and Alice O’Neill McLoughlin, one of Eugene O’Neill’s remaining Irish relatives from Tinneranny just outside New Ross, from where James O’Neill emigrated in 1851.
The close bilateral partnership, reflected in the slogan ‘One Festival, Two Countries’ will feature productions of O’Neill plays in Danville, California, throughout September 2018, and in New Ross, Ireland, October 11-14, 2018. It is anticipated that the jointly produced “One Festival, Two Countries” will become an annual event.
James O’Neill left Rosbercon, just outside New Ross, in 1851 on board the India aged fiveyears-old. His family swapped poverty in Ireland for dire circumstances in the United States and his early years were blighted by extreme hardship. James, however, managed to rise above his circumstances to become the most famous actor in America, thanks to his role in The Count of Monte Cristo, a stage adaptation of the Dumas novel.
The festival will feature a screening of the 1913 silent film of The Count of Monte Cristo starring O’Neill. The film has all the features of classic silent film melodrama and will give festival-goers an opportunity to see James O’Neill in the role he made famous. Tomas said: ‘ The festival will be delighted, in this sense, to give James O’Neill, belatedly, his New Ross debut.’
Dr Richard Hayes of Waterford Institute of Technology, a Eugene O’Neill scholar as well as a scholar of silent film, with actor Patrick Midgley, will introduce the film and will also give an illustrated talk on the relationship between James O’Neill, his son Eugene and their Irish roots.
A production of Beyond the Horizon, the play which won O’Neill his first Pulitzer Prize in 1920, will be the featured Irish element to the festival, together with the ‘Glencairn’ plays, a series of three one act plays performed onboard the Dunbrody ship.
Tao House in Danville was O’Neill’s home when he wrote his last, greatest plays, including Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh and The Moon for the Misbegotten. 2018 will mark the 19th annual Eugene O’Neill Festival in Danville.
Each September the Danville festival features over a dozen performances of plays by O’Neill and other great playwrights as well as such events as traditional Irish music and storytelling.
Eric Fraisher Hayes, artistic director of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in California, will travel to New Ross as guest director for the festival. Eric will direct an American cast in the O’Neill classic ‘Hughie’. The play normally seen as an extended monologue has been reimagined by Eric with the stage directions becoming a third character. This fresh take on the play offers audiences a chance to find a new appreciation for O’Neill the dramatist and the humourist. Discussions are under way for Hughie to tour other cities in Ireland at the conclusion of the New Ross festival. ‘We are excited about this opportunity to reach new audiences,’ commented the director, Eric Fraisher Hayes.
Sean Reidy said: ‘We are looking forward to establishing a new international theatre festival in New Ross in the autumn of 2018 to complement the highly successful Kennedy Summer School and the New Ross Piano Festival.’
Dan McGovern, President of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in the US said that the US Foundation are excited to be partnering with the Eugene O’Neill International Festival of Theatre to celebrate the life and works of James and Eugene O’Neill in their ancestral home in New Ross, County Wexford.’
Festival Director Tomas Kavanagh said: ‘We are looking forward to presenting the works of Eugene O’Neill and James O’Neill in St Michael’s Theatre and in particular to welcoming the US production of Hughie, with its American cast and director, Eric Fraisher Hayes.’
The plays that will feature in next year’s festival include: ‘Beyond the Horizon’ which tells the story of two men, Robert, a poet and dreamer, always longing for the opportunity ‘ beyond the horizon’, and his brother, Andrew, a pragmatic farmer deeply wedded to his land and his home. Both brothers love the same woman, Ruth, and circumstances arise that force Andrew, the farmer, to go to sea and Robert, the dreamer, to work on the farm. The play won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920; The ‘Glencairn’ plays about the sailors on a ship called Glencairn, plays based in part on his own brief career as a merchant seaman. The Eugene O’Neill Festival will present three of these plays in a novel set of productions around the town of New Ross. In Bound East for Cardiff shipmates care for an injured comrade as the Glencairn steams through the fog towards the safety of port. In The Long Voyage Home, set in a quayside tavern, the crew celebrate as one of their number plans to leave the ship for his farm back at home, but the life of the sea has other plans for the man. The Moon of the Caribees, the final play in the sequence, is a haunting, mystical piece, a meditation on Fate and an unfulfilled life.
Mr Reidy said: ‘ The production of these plays in New Ross, with its deep sea-going traditions and, particularly, its associations with ship-based emigration, will be a moving and unique experience.’
Hughie tells the tale of two lonely strangers grappling to make sense of their lives, their relationship and their responsibilities to each other. The play normally seen as an extended monologue has some of the most elaborate stage directions in the O’Neill cannon. These stage directions are so detailed that director Eric Fraisher Hayes has reimagined the play with the stage directions becoming a third character. Mr Kavanagh said: ‘ This fresh take on the play offers audiences a chance to find a new appreciation for O’Neill the dramatist and the humorist. Between lines of dialogue, a rich inner life is revealed about the characters and their author.’
Along with the one-act Hughie, there will be a playful presentation of some of O’Neill greatest stage directions.