Origin 1st Irish Festival Finale

Overview

Origin 1st Irish Festival Finale is a weekend of events hosted by Irish Arts Center, culminating in the Festival’s Closing Ceremony. Join us across the weekend for four new plays and a literary event in our library, and a special musical concert performance of Eamon O’Tuama’s Peace and Love in Brooklyn in our theatre.

Saturday, January 28 
Hunger by Bohdan Boychuk
2:30pm, Library
RESERVE TICKETS

Worlds by John Kearns
4:30pm, Library
RESERVE TICKETS

Peace and Love In Brooklyn - A Concert Performance
7pm, Theatre
RESERVE TICKETS

Sunday, January 29
Dublin Noir by Honor Molloy
3pm, Library
RESERVE TICKETS

Thirst by Ronan Noone
5pm, Library
RESERVE TICKETS

Those You Pass on The Street by Laurence McKeown
7pm, Library
RESERVE TICKETS

Monday, January 30
Origin First Irish Awards and Closing Ceremony
7pm, Theatre
RESERVE TICKETS

Capacity in the library is limited. Reservations are required for all free events, and seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Café at Irish Arts Center will be open beginning at the following times, and will remain open after the program. 

Saturday:

• Beverage service, 2pm
• Food service, 4pm 

Sunday:

• Beverage service, 2:30pm
• Food service, 4:30pm

HUNGER 
Written by Bohdan Boychuk

Saturday, January 28, 2:30pm 
Free Event 
Reservation required. See link above.

Bohdan Boychuk’s Hunger delves fearlessly into Stalin’s famine-genocide (Holodomor) that lasted from 1932-1933 and resulted in the death of over four million Ukrainians. Millions more were affected afterward, by the ensuing erasure of their culture, art, and language. With echoes of the millions of Irish lives lost in the Famine, Hunger is a battle cry against systems that threaten our individual lives and cultures.

Adapters: Dr. Maria Rewakowicz and Emma Denson
Director: Emma Denson
Cast: Julian Abelskamp, Anne Guadagnino, Alvin Christmas, Úna Clancy, and Maryna Vogtsberger
Stage Directions: Isaiah Dodo-Williams

WORLDS 
Written by John Kearns 

Saturday, January 28, 4:30pm
Free event 
Reservation required. See link above.

Through the lens of the Seven Deadly Sins/Lively Virtues, John Kearns’ Worlds examines four generations of the Logan family from Ireland in 1870 to New York City in 1998.

Hosted by Kearns, this unique reading and book signing features actors Elisabeth Ness and Brendan Walsh performing excerpts and the one-and-only Mary Courtney performing songs central to the novel.

Cast: Elisabeth Ness, Brendan Walsh, John Kearns 
Music: Mary Courtney 

PEACE AND LOVE IN BROOKLYN – IN CONCERT
By Eamon O’Tuama  
 
Saturday, January 28, 2023 at 7:00pm
All tickets $25 ($28 inclusive of $3 fee)

A poignant, time bending rock 'n' roll drama about an Irish family that never was.

One drunken night down a blackberry lane in 1973 Dublin, two teenagers conceive a child but separate in shame. Peace and Love in Brooklyn, a new Irish musical by Eamon O’Tuama, follows the lives of Kiero, a troubled and colorful rock 'n’ roll roadie and his son, Jim, an anxiety-ridden musician, raised by single mother, Theresa.

Father and son have never met until Theresa hums a melody she has carried for years. A musical thread unravels and a a reckoning begins.

Peace and Love in Brooklyn will be performed in concert with a live band live band, and will feature Annalisa Chamberlin, Maria Deasy, Liam Forde, Briana Layon, Aedin Moloney, Fergal Titley and Gary Troy.

Directed by award-winning actor John Keating with musical direction by Ed Goldschneider, conductor of the original Broadway run of Urinetown. 

Peace and Love in Brooklyn - In Concert is being produced by Origin's 2019 1st Irish Spirit of the Festival Winner Maria Deasy and Composer/Writer Eamon O'Tuama. The show was developedwith support from Irish American Writers & Artists (IAW&A) and Origin Theatre Company

Cast: Annalisa Chamberlin, Maria Deasy, Liam Forde, Briana Layon, Aedin
Moloney, Fergal Titley and Gary Troy
A new musical by Eamon O'Tuama
Produced by Maria Deasy and Eamon O’Tuama
Directed by John Keating
Musical Direction by Ed Goldschneider

DUBLIN NOIR  
Written by Honor Molloy 
Presented in association with Irish American Writers and Artists (IAW&A)

Sunday, January 29, 3pm
Free event 
Reservation required. See link above.

Acclaimed New York-based playwright Honor Molloy sets her latest beautifully macabre play in August 1939. Europe’s boiling up to war. But Ireland’s having none of it.

On a day trip to Drogheda, Dubliner Tadgh Steele is captured by a dairy farmer named Murphy and locked in a cowshed. Is Tadgh a poet as he claims or - as Murphy suspects - a Nazi spy? Makes no difference to Murphy’s slop girl Dolly, who falls in love with the handsome stranger and casts him as the hero of a “fil-um in her head.” There’s only one way off the farm. 

Molloy’s astonishing Round Room, about childbirth in the wards of Dublin’s famous Rotunda Hospital over several centuries, won Best Playwright in Origin's 1st Irish 2020. Her brutally eloquent Crackskull Row (directed by Kira Simring, produced by Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre) was included in Origin's 1st Irish 2016, becoming a NY Times Critic’s Pick.

THIRST 
Written by Ronán Noone

Sunday, January 29, 5pm
Free event. 
Reservation required. See link above.

Ronán Noone’s Thirst is set during Eugene O’Neill’s classic Long Day’s Journey Into Night, where passion, wit and beauty bubble to the surface as two Irish servant women and an American chauffeur pass that day in the kitchen of the Tyrone family’s residence in 1912. Thirst had its world premiere at Dorset Theatre Playhouse.

“…an intense emotional experience” Times Argus
“Sublime…a stunningly offered story” Brattleboro Reformer  

THOSE YOU PASS ON THE STREET 

Written by Laurence McKeown

Sunday, January 29, 7pm
Free event 
Reservation required. See link above.

In Laurence McKeown’s arresting new work, Elizabeth, an RUC widow, walks into a Sinn Fein office seeking assistance with anti-social behavior in her area. There she sparks up a friendship with community officer Frank. This brief encounter challenges their pre-conceptions and beliefs along with their family and political loyalties. Those You Pass On The Street explores the complexities of dealing with the legacy of conflict, especially when that conflict is local and personal.

Commissioned by Healing Through Remembering and first produced by Kabosh Theatre Company, both from Northern Ireland.

Director: Ciaran Byrne
Cast: Mazvita Chanakira, John Duddy, Labhaoise Magee, and Ciaran Byrne
Produced by Origin Theatre Company & Ciaran Byrne

ORIGIN 1st IRISH AWARDS AND CLOSING CEREMONY

Monday, January 30, 7pm 
All tickets $50 
Limited tickets available

The Festival’s Closing Ceremony will feature excerpts from Peace and Love in Brooklyn and a filmed appearance by the celebrated Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland, which will be in the midst of an all-Ireland tour prior to its Carnegie Hall appearance on St Patrick’s Day. Appearing virtually from Ireland, the youth orchestra will play with members of the Fairfield County Children’s Choir, who will appear live on stage. Throughout the evening, winners of the Origin 1st Irish Festival Awards, recognizing unique contributions to the Festival, will be announced. The celebrations conclude with a two-hour post show reception with musical entertainment, open bar and hors d’oeuvres.