New York City's first festival celebrating Irish theatre will be presented Sept. 6-23. Composed of three contemporary Irish plays and an evening of five short works, the First Irish Festival hosts productions from the Origin Theatre Company, Solas Nua, Tir NA Theatre and the Keegan Theatre.
Origin Theatre Company's End of Lines is "an evening of five short plays inspired by journeys on the NYC subway" that was written by Gary Duggan, Abbie Spellen, Ursula Rani Sarma, Pat Kinevane and Morna Regan. Directed by David Sullivan, Julia Gibson, George C Heslin, Fiana Toibin and Alyse Rothman, the production runs Sept. 6-28.
Edna Walsh's Disco Pigs, directed by Dan Brick and Linda Murray, and featuring Madeline Carr and Rex Daugherty, will play Sept. 9-14. Presented by Solas Nua, the production is described as such: "Pig and Runt are two 17-year-olds who have grown up sharing everything: birthday, language, and worldview. But at that moment when pop songs and life-changing orgasms flash by and last forever, their friendship begins to implode on the road to adulthood."
Mojo Mickyo, from playwright Owen Mc Cafferty, is presented by Tir NA Theatre Sept. 16-21. Stephen Russell directs Colin Hamell and Derry Woodhouse in the "vibrant and faced-paced tale of two boys growing up in Belfast during the summer of 1970. Playing headers, torturing a cantankerous old man, building huts, spitting from cinema balconies and re-enacting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Mojo Mickyo is a classic coming-of-age story about two boys whose innocence is ultimately betrayed by communal hatred."
The final Irish offering will be the Keegan Theatre's Love, Peace and Robbery, playing Sept. 23-28. Kerry Waters directs the play by Liam Heylin that features Matthew Keenan, Eric Lucas and Bruce Rauscher. Love, Peace and Robbery follows "the escapades of Gary and Darren - both straight out of prison. Living with a curfew and the broken pieces of their pasts, they confront life back on the streets of Cork. Two guys who prove that there may actually be honor among thieves." The Made in Poland Festival, featuring the U.S. premieres of three works from Poland's leading playwrights, runs Oct. 20-Nov. 24.
Ewa Wojciak and Marcin Keszycki wrote and will direct Theater of the Eight Day's The Files, which is scheduled to run Oct. 22-Nov. 9. Ewa Wójciak, Marcin Kszycki, Adam Borowski and Tadeusz Janiszewski appear in the work "inspired by the theater's discovery of a Secret Police report on one of their early plays. The author's intellectually over-ambitious analysis of the play's subversive tendencies was so grotesquely uncomprehending that it was hilarious… The Files draws back the Iron Curtain to give audiences to a striking look at living and working through an oppressive government regime."
Jackson Gay will direct Made in Poland, by Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, running Oct. 29-Nov. 30. The Play Company presents the work about "a rebellious young man furiously searching for how to live in the new, post-communist Poland. Along the way he turns to his priest and his teacher for guidance, gets entangled with gangsters, and meets a girl."
Immigrants Theater Company of New York will present Sandbox/First Time, running Nov. 10-30. Additional details will be released shortly.
Additional productions on the 59E59 line-up include The Night Carter Was Bad, from Kids with Guns, Sept. 29-Oct. 13; Andreas Jungwirth's Outside In, Oct. 1-19; the satirical musical Improbable Frequency, by Arthur Riordan and Bell Helicopter, presented Nov. 28-Jan. 4, 2009; as well as New House Under Construction, running Dec. 1-Jan. 4, 2009.
Additional details on the 59E59 season will be announced shortly.
Tickets for 59E59 Theaters productions are available by calling (212) 279-4200 or by visiting TicketCentral.
For further information visit 59E59Theaters.
