Rae, Hynes, Etc. Set for Princeton Irish Theatre Symposium

Irish actors, theater directors and other luminaries, such as Stephen Rae, Garry Hynes, and Fiona Shaw, will gather at Princeton University Oct. 13-15 for discussions, readings and performances highlighting the Players & Painted Stage Symposium.

Among the many features of the event, Irish actor Rea, well known for his Oscar-nominated performance in the movie The Crying Game, will join Ireland's leading cultural critic Luke Gibbons in a conversation about theater's role in art and politics, and Irish director Hynes, the first woman to win a Tony Award for theater direction, will give a separate talk sharing her experiences. Running concurrent with the symposium will be the performance of playwright Brian Friel's Translations at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton.

The symposium is free and open to the public and is being held to celebrate the donation of an expansive collection of Irish theater announced by the University last month. Class of 1953 alumnus Leonard L. Milberg donated to Princeton more than 1,000 plays, photographs, playbills and other works documenting the history of Irish theater dating back 160 years. The symposium will reflect on the long theatrical legacy.

The weekend of events will begin at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13, with a keynote address delivered by Joe Dowling, former director of Ireland's national theater, the Abbey Theatre, and current artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. In a conversation at the Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau St., Dowling will discuss his coming of age in Irish theater and the differences between Irish and American theater practices.

The exhibition showcasing the Leonard L. Milberg Irish Theater Collection will then have its official opening at 6 p.m. Friday in Firestone Library, featuring the gem of the collection, the unpublished manuscript The Cooing of Doves by renowned playwright Sean O'Casey.

Most events will take place on Saturday, Oct. 14, including a discussion with Hynes, the artistic director of Galway's Druid Theatre. She will talk about her work on a range of Irish plays, as well as her direction of McCarter Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club co-production of Translations, which will have its opening Oct. 13 and run through Oct. 29.  Many in the cast are Irish, and two are making their American stage debut.

McCarter Theatre artistic director Mann will join Hynes and Fiach MacConghail, the current director of the Abbey Theatre, in the Saturday discussion. Mann and Hynes will also give a special post-performance discussion after a Sunday matinee of Translations. Ticket purchases through the McCarter box office are necessary for the general public to attend all performances of Translations. 

A full schedule for the symposium is available online. Other symposium highlights include the conversation "Theater at the Crossroad of Art and Politics" with actor Rea and theater critic Gibbons; renowned Irish actress Fiona Shaw, of Harry Potter fame, reading from the work of Irish playwright Marina Carr; a reading of The Cooing of Dove directed by Princeton Lecturer in Theater and Dance Timothy Vasen; and a roundtable discussion in which Rea, Gibbons, Hynes and Shaw will join Irish playwrights Mark O'Rowe and Vincent Woods to discuss the history of Irish theater.

Cadden will moderate the roundtable with Pulitzer Prize-winning professor Paul Muldoon, Princeton's Howard G.B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities and founding chair of the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. The Milberg collection of Irish theater being celebrated by the symposium was donated to the University in Muldoon's honor.

Milberg's Irish theater donation was his fourth literary gift to Princeton, as he donated a collection of modern American poetry to the University in 1988, a collection of Irish poetry in 1994 and a collection of Jewish American writers in 2001.

Students in Princeton's Program in Theater and Dance will mount a 99th anniversary production of John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in November in recognition of the Milberg donation.

Also, two publications focusing on the Milberg Irish Theater Collection will accompany the celebrations in October. The first is a catalog of the collection, including biographical sketches of the more than 80 playwrights represented in the collection. The second is a special Irish theater issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, including 40 essays on the history of Irish theater by leading playwrights and scholars, such as Muldoon, Friel, Rea, and Edward Albee, as well as the first publication of The Cooing of Doves.

For more information about the exhibition, symposium and performances, visit the Players and Painted Stage website at http://weblamp.princeton.edu/~milberg/  or call the library at (609) 258-3242.