Tony Walton Directs Concert Of New Musical TRANSPORT At The Irish Arts Center 4/30-5/2

The Irish Arts Center and 1407 Productions LLC announce a world premiere concert performance of TRANSPORT, a new musical by Thomas Keneally and Larry Kirwan, directed by Tony Walton, as part of the Irish Arts Center New Plays Partnership Series. TRANSPORT will be presented as a concert reading from Friday, April 30 – Sunday, May 2. The performance schedule is Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. Tickets are $38 ($32 for IAC Members). TRANSPORT takes place at the Irish Arts Center (553 West 51st Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues). Tickets can be purchased by calling SmartTix at 212-868-4444 or at www.smarttix.com. For more information, visit www.irishartscenter.org.

TRANSPORT is a new musical that tells a universal and exhilarating story of immigration, loss and romance on a very human scale.  Based on the real journey of an Irish woman from Cork to Australia in 1842, Keneally’s story gives voice to the passions, hopes, and fears of unforgettable characters caught up in the grand sweep of history.

Written and conceived by world-renowned novelist and Man Booker prize winner Thomas Keneally (Schindler’s List), with music composed by Wexford's Larry Kirwan, founder of the iconic New York City band Black 47, and under the direction of Tony Award-winner Tony Walton, TRANSPORT is a landmark story of the founding of one of the most vibrant and innovative countries in the world, settled by a dazzling array of engaging and determined people.

Thomas Keneally is a master, creating unforgettable characters integrated with essential historical accuracy. Through songs of hope (“Dreams of New York”) and heartbreak (“A Stranger in My Own Country”), Kirwan’s score elevates the story, blending traditional Irish and Australian music with a contemporary immediacy that engages and inspires.

TRANSPORT reverberates with its audiences as an allegory for displacement in the times in which we live, and as a triumphant celebration of the human spirit.

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Thomas Keneally is one of the most successful modern Australian writers, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize on 4 occasions: in 1972 for The Chant of Jimmie
Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest in 1975, and Confederates in 1979, before winning the prize in 1982 with Schindler’s Ark, later turned into the award-winning Stephen Spielberg film Schindler’s List in 1993. In Australia, Keneally has won the Miles Franklin Award twice with Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete. His most recent books include the non-fiction offerings Lincoln (2003), A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia (2005) and Searching for Schindler: A Memoir (2007) and the novels The Tyrant's Novel (2003) and The Widow and Her Hero (2007). Thomas Keneally was awarded the Order of Australia in 1983 for his services to
Australian literature. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney.

Larry Kirwan, co-founder of the iconic New York City band Black 47, is a recording artist, author and playwright. Independent of Black 47, Larry has produced two solo recordings, Kilroy Was Here and Keltic Kids. He also has published three books, Rockin' The Bronx, Liverpool Fantasy and Green Suede Shoes: An Irish American Odyssey. He has written eleven plays and musicals, five of which are collected in the book Mad Angels. Liverpool Fantasy, his best known play, has been produced Off-Broadway and at the Dublin Theatre Festival. Kirwan hosts and produces Celtic Crush for SiriusXM Satellite Radio and writes a weekly column for the Irish Echo. In 1995 the NY Daily News named him one of the top fifty most interesting New Yorkers, several places ahead of Madonna. While taking nothing from the blonde seductress, Kirwan keenly feels their change in fortune.

Tony Walton is a Director and Designer of sets and costumes, honored with 16 Tony Award Nominations for his Broadway sets and/or costumes. Pippin, House of Blue Leaves, and Guys and Dolls won him Tonys.  Among his 20 films, Mary Poppins, The Boy Friend, The Wiz and Murder on the Orient Express earned him 5 Academy Award nominations.  All That Jazz won him the Oscar, and Death of a Salesman the Emmy. During the last 12 years he has directed productions of Wilde, Shaw, Coward, and others for New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre, San Diego’s Old Globe, Sarasota’s Asolo Rep, and Bay Street Theatre, Sag Harbor. His most recent Broadway set designs were for last season’s musical of Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities.  He has most recently Directed and Designed Shaw’s Candida for The Irish Repertory Theatre.  In 1991 he was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Irish Arts Center, founded in 1972, is a New York-based arts and cultural center dedicated to projecting a dynamic image of Ireland and Irish America for the 21st century, building community with audiences of all backgrounds, and preserving the stories and traditions of Irish culture for generations to come. The Irish Arts Center’s multi-disciplinary programming is centered around three core areas: Performance – including live music, dance, theatre, film, literature, and the humanities; Exhibition – including visual arts presentations and cultural exhibitions that tell the evolving Irish story; and Education, with dozens of classes per week in Irish language, history, music, and dance. Located in New York City, a global capital of arts and culture, Irish Arts Center serves as a dynamic platform for top emerging and established artists and cultural creators to reach a New York, national, and global audience, and as a gateway for other institutions to access first-rate Irish and Irish American culture.

1407 Productions is a production company run by Nina L. Keneally and James F. Lightstone. Keneally and Lightstone most recently co-produced the new musical GOOD VIBRATIONS for Broadway, featuring the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Prior to that, Ms. Keneally co-produced the Tony-winning play The Last Night of Ballyhoo by Alfred Uhry, author of the Pulitzer Prize and Oscar winning Driving Miss Daisy. With Jane Harmon, she co-produced 1996’s five-time Tony nominated production of Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Buried Child directed by Gary Sinise. Mr. Lightstone has been in the entertainment industry for almost 30 years, with experience in virtually all aspects of the Industry: President & Chief Operating Officer of Music Rights Exchange, a business-to-business music licensing marketplace for film, television, records and advertising; Senior Vice President, Business Affairs, General Counsel & Secretary for Your Choice TV, LLC (a subsidiary of Discovery Communications, Inc.); Vice President and Senior Counsel for Sony Music Entertainment; and head of Business Affairs for SBK Entertainment World.

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