Nationwide Imagine Ireland Festival to Include Work by Abbey Theatre, Gate Theatre, Druid Theatre Company, and More

Initial plans have been announced for Imagine Ireland, a year-long multidisciplinary season of Irish arts in America, to be offered at theaters across the country.

Among the cities and venues where events will be held are New York and the New York Public Library, BAM and Lincoln Center; Washington, DC and the Kennedy Center, Studio Theater, and National Gallery of Art; Boston and Emerson College and the Berklee College of Music; Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Shakespeare Theater; Los Angeles and the LA Philharmonic: San Francisco and the Roxie Theater and Southern Exposure Gallery; Atlanta and Emory University and the Woodruff Arts Center; and Philadelphia and the Annenberg Center and Rosenbach Library.

Among the theatrical highlights of Imagine Ireland will be three offerings from the Druid Theatre Company: The Silver Tassle at the Lincoln Center Festival; Penelope in Washington, DC, and a national tour of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishman.

The Performance Corporation, with Solas Nua, will create Swampoodle, a site-specific work in Washington DC; and The Company will present As You Are Now So Once Were We at the RADAR Festival in Los Angeles.

Two other Imagine Ireland theatrical offerings are currently running in New York: the Abbey Theatre’s production of John Gabriel Borkman at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Gate Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Watt, which is part of the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater.

Among the music offerings will be the world premiere of Gerald Barry’s opera The Importance of Being of Earnest with the LA Philharmonic; and a month-long, 19-venue tour of Paddy Moloney and The Chieftains.

Other aspects of the festival will include two Irish feature films that will be part of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and Irish Film Festivals which will be held in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and Seattle. There will also be a retrospective of Irish filmmaking, curated by Gabriel Byrne in association with the Irish Film Institute and MOMA, offered at the Museum of Modern Art.

Dance will also be featured in Imagine Ireland, with Rex Levitates performing Secondary Sources at the Baryshnikov Arts Center; John Scott’s Irish Modern Dance Theatre offering a new work at LaMama Experimental Theatre Club; and Matthew Morris ‘ My Body Travels playing in Washington DC.

In addition, Imagine Ireland will feature a literature program, curated by Belinda McKeon, which will be offered throughout the country and involve authors such as Colum McCann, Anne Enright, Colm Toíbín, Frank McGuinness, Paul Muldoon and Joseph O’Connor.