Thanks to the efforts of George Heslin, nine companies presented the plays of 13 Irish writers at five locations during New York’s first Irish theater festival called 1st Irish 2008.

 

Heslin, a playwright and actor himself, was no stranger to the New York stage when the idea for this festival came to him. He had been featured in several off-Broadway productions and was once a resident of London’s West End theater scene.

 

Heslin, in an interview with The Irish Voice, said of 1st Irish, “What inspired me to do this is that I’ve worked on a personal level with a lot of these great new playwrights in Ireland and I never saw their work being produced in America. That was the first spark behind it.”

 

Heslin, who is Irish born, studied at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin, The Abbey Theatre Dublin Directors Program and The HB Studio New York. His theater company, Origin Theatre, has brought a huge number of European, many of them Irish, writers’ works to America. Heslin worked in television in Ireland and is moving into film, while planning this year’s 2nd Irish 2009.