Everything’s Coming Up Irish at the Kennedy Center


It’s not often that all the secret and not-so-secret Irishers of Washington, D.C., and the surrounding region get to see and be everything Irish for three solid weeks. Now’s your chance: the Kennedy Center is presenting “Ireland 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts and Culture,” a festival that opens May 17 and runs through June 5.

Ireland may have a history of strife, what with famines, civil wars, religious persecution and the so-called Troubles, the late-20th-century conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. But Ireland is ancient as well as modern, very much in its peculiar way, and those tugs of war — over religion, culture and the dearly-and-with-difficultly-held old ways and language — have produced an outpouring of music, dance, literature, theater, novels and poetry. It has enriched both the old sod and much of the new, especially in America.

The Great Famine of the 1840s spurred a huge influx of Irish immigrants to America that really never stopped, and those same immigrants — like so many others — were not always welcomed with open arms (opposition to Irish immigrants was among the noted characteristics of the Know Nothing Party just before the Civil War). The Irish, as they are wont to do, persevered. In the cities, they became maids, butlers, policemen, firemen and, last but not least, community leaders and politicians, until one of them became the first Catholic and first descendant of Irish immigrants elected president of the United States.

That would be John F. Kennedy, whose ghost and presence is very much a part of the Kennedy Center, and of this festival. On several stages and in the Grand Foyers and Halls, we get to see what the Irish past sounded like, how the people danced, what words and in what language the poets wrote, the plays they made and still do. We get to see and hear what the present and the future sounds like, with a host of contemporary Irish performers, writers, dancers, choreographers and creators of visual art.

The legendary Irish actress Fiona Shaw — who performs and gives a master class during the course of the festival — is directing tomorrow’s festival opening, in which a host of performers, like Tara Erraught, Colin Dunne, Louis Lovett, members of the Abbey Theatre and uilleann pipers, will be on stage with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Irish conductor David Brophy.

It’s a sprawling festival, a revelation in green of everything the Irish have to offer.

When JFK visited Ireland in 1963, it marked a kind of homecoming for him, since his parents were the offspring of the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Irish immigrants on both sides. The visit, greeted by the locals with a joyous outburst of love and enthusiasm, was recorded by all sorts of cameras. Three films will be shown in the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater on May 28. One of them is a short black-and-white Amharc Eireann newsreel in the Irish language. There’s also “The Columbian Fathers Present President Kennedy in Ireland” and “John F. Kennedy in the Island of Dreams,” a 40-minute film marketing the 30th anniversary of the trip.

The following day, Kennedy’s 99th birthday will be celebrated with “Celebrating the Past to Awaken the Future,” in which notables and young artists unveil a special installation created for the Kennedy Center’s Centennial Celebration of President Kennedy.

Highlights abound of the literary, the dramatic, the musical and the footsteps kind, as well as installations.

Shaw, an artist in residence here, will be a highly active participant, showcasing acclaimed Irish texts of literature and poetry in “Blowing the Heart Open” on May 31 and, on June 3, hosting a dialogue on the importance and impact of the works of William Shakespeare.

Drama gets a grand go in the Eisenhower Theater on May 18 and 19, with the Abbey Theatre production of Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars,” a tense and tenacious play about the Troubles. Samuel Beckett, the famed Irish poet of reduction, will be conjured with the Pan Pan Theatre’s production of his first radio play, “All That Fall,” and storyteller Louis Lovett’s presentation of the one-man show “The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly.” Of special interest will be Olwen Fouéré, the theater-maker who performs “riverrun,” her acclaimed adaptation of the voice of the river from James Joyce’s indestructible “Finnegan’s Wake.”

Music will be present with Camerata Ireland, appearing with Harmony North Choir; Camille O’Sullivan will give a solo concert of cabaret, Irish-style; and the 20-member ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s opera “The Hunger.” There’s also the Gloaming, a contemporary Irish musical supergroup with vocalist Iarla O Lionaird, who will give a concert in English and Gaelic.

In literature, there’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s gathering of words and music “Muldoon’s Picnic,” with his house band Rogue Oliphant in the Terrace Room. Muldoon and Maureen Kennelly of Poetry Ireland have also devised a weeklong literature series.

There will be food and presentations of the culinary arts, including, of course, a bit of whiskey tasting.

And as in any Kennedy Center Festival, there are installations for the eye, mind and heart. There’s the large-scale installation created by Grafton Architects, inspired by the Irish Ogham alphabet, which dates back to the fourth century. The installation interprets the ancient language into a series of large concrete fins (ten out of the original 23), inviting visitors to engage with its tactile surfaces.

Of special interest is “A Girl’s Bedroom,” the work of Enda Walsh, one of Ireland’s most noted contemporary playwrights. It’s an immersive theatrical installation that will be presented three times an hour for an audience of five people at a time. In another installation, “Gaeilge Tamagotchi,” visitors are invited to wind their way through a labyrinth of Irish linen to receive an endangered Irish word, which they will be tasked with nurturing and preserving.

The harp, a symbol of Ireland, will appear in several guises, notably a harp from 1820 created by famed maker John Egan, and the Earth Harp, a creation of the mind of William Close, originator of more than 100 types of musical instruments.

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