Photo Flash: TOSOS presents the US Premiere of Critically Acclaimed Play EIREBRUSHED

Many New York City companies have toured to the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival (IDGTF) in the last decade, and now a new play by the festival's founder is coming to NYC.

Brian Merriman's Eirebrushed opens Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7 pm, at Downtown Art, running through November 19, presented by TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), New York's oldest professional LGBT theater, and the IDGTF, as part of Culture Ireland's Ireland 2016 Commemorative Arts Programme.

Four revolutionaries meet in the afterlife, 100 years after the 1916 rising to tell the hidden stories of the lives of some of the heroes who would not 'fit' the vision of the new 'Republic of equals' that was promised in the glorious revolution.

Full of humor, pathos and actual testimony, Eirebrushed seeks to challenge the conventional Irish Republican stereotype to set out the contribution of lesbian and gay people at a time of struggle to overcome oppression in Ireland. The play records their words used in inspirational poetry and speeches as they struggled to create a society where, as the Proclamation promised "no minority would be subject to the will of the majority."

The all-Irish cast stars award-winning actress Maria Blaney as Nurse Elizabeth O'Farrell, who was famously airbrushed out of the 1916 surrender photograph; Flo McSweeney as author, trade unionist and activist sister of Countess Markievicz, Eva Gore Booth; John Kelly as poet-turned-revolutionary Padraig Pearse; and Stephen Gorman as human rights activist Roger Casement.

Performances take place at Downtown Art, 70 E. 4th Street (between 2nd Ave. & Bowery), New York, NY 10003. Subway - F to 2nd Avenue, 6 to Astor Place. Tickets are $25 for adults and $12 for students/seniors and are on sale at www.eirebrushedinnyc.bpt.me

Remaining Show dates:

Wednesday, November 16th at 7:00 pm - Talkback with playwright Brian Merriman and iconic LGBT activist Brendan Fay (St. Pat's for All, Lavender & Green Alliance).

Thursday, November 17th at 7:00 pm

Friday, November 18th at 7:00 pm

Saturday, November 19th at 7:00 pm

More info is available at www.tososnyc.org

About The International Gay Theatre Festival

The International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival celebrates positive LGBT identity through theatre and the contribution of gay people, past and present, to the arts. Founded in 2004 with the aim to create new opportunities for visibility and affirmation of emerging LGBT artists and theatrical works with an LGBT theme or relevance, the festival has grown to become the largest event of its type in the world.

The festival has been bringing companies from Ireland and around the world to Dublin since 2004. Culture Ireland's support has enabled the Festival to explore the common culture that creates gay theatre internationally. The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, which supports arts projects which examine LGBT history, also provided a production grant to TOSOS for the project.

About TOSOS

In 1974, Off-Off Broadway veteran Doric Wilson, cabaret star Billy Blackwell, and director Peter dell Valle, started the first professional gay theatre company in NYC. It was called The Other Side of Silence; TOSOS for short. In 2002, directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs and playwright Wilson resurrected the company as TOSOS II, dedicating it to an honest and open exploration of the life experience and cultural sensibility of the LGBT community and to preserving and promoting our literary past in a determined effort to keep our theatrical heritage alive. TOSOS's recently won The New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Revival of a Play for Doric Wilson's Street Theatre.

Photo credit: B. Molloy

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