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Irish Rep to stage 26 Yeats plays

By
CAHIR O'DOHERTY
,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Monday, April 13, 2009, 3:57 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:23 PM
Read more: Entertainment, Performing Arts, Theater, Theatrical Plays, William Butler Yeats

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Peter Cormicam, Patrick Fitzgerald and Terry Donnelly in rehearsals for "The Pot of Broth"
Peter Cormicam, Patrick Fitzgerald and Terry Donnelly in rehearsals for "The Pot of Broth"

 

In an effort worthy of their mighty subject, the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York will stage a month-long festival of all 26 plays written by William Butler Yeats, the world’s most revered Irish poet.

The Rep’s Yeats Project will begin previews on Wednesday, April 8. The first production will open on Wednesday, April 15.

The Rep will stage all 26 plays in association with NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, the American Irish Historical Society and the W.B. Yeats Society of New York. Eight of the plays will receive fully mounted productions on the main stage of the theater, while the remaining 18 plays will receive staged readings in the downstairs Studio Theatre. 

“It’s an epic undertaking,” director Ciaran O’Reilly tells IrishCentral.com. “When the Abbey Theatre in Dublin produced all of Yeats’ plays recently they had funding from Coca-Cola. We’re doing this with far less funding but as a labor of love because we admire the plays and the poet, and we know there’s a huge audience here for his work.”

The fully mounted plays on the main stage will be "The Countess Cathleen," "The Cat and the Moon," "On Baile’s Strand," "The Land of Heart’s Desire," "The Pot of Broth," "Purgatory," "A Full Moon In March" and the famous Irish Nationalist favorite "Cathleen Ni Houlihan."

The remaining 18 plays will receive staged readings in the Studio Theater at the Rep. Included are some of Yeats’ most admired works, including "At the Hawk’s Well," "Calvary," "Deirdre," "The Hour Glass," "The King’s Threshold," "Oedipus Rex," "The Resurrection," "The Shadowy Waters," "The Words Upon the Window Pane," "The Green Helmet," "The Only Jealousy of Emer," "The Unicorn from the Stars," "The Player Queen," "The Dreaming of the Bones" and "The Death of Cuchulain."

It’s impossible not to admire Irish Rep founders Charlotte Moore and O’Reilly’s artistic nerve. In the middle of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Irish Rep has decided to stage some of the most beautiful but rarely produced Irish plays ever written. 

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Irish Rep to stage 26 Yeats plays | Entertainment in Ireland and Around the World | IrishCentral


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