The Abbey Theatre is partnering with National University Ireland, Galway to make the almost two million items in the Abbey’s archives available online. Digitising the theatre posters, prints, programmes, light, set, and costume designs, and audio files will take between three and four years, according to the Abbey Theatre’s website.

    2011 is going to be an exciting year for the Irish arts in America. On January 7th, Culture Ireland announced its expansive project for the coming year, titled Imagine Ireland.  Launched in New York City’s Lincoln Center by Cultural Ambassador and renowned actor Gabriel Byrne, Minister for Art, Sport and Tourism Mary Hanafin, and Culture Ireland CEO Eugene Downes, Imagine Ireland will bring over 1,000 Irish artists and producers to the Unites States, and will encompass more than 400 events across 40 states. The two seasons (Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter) will cover the entire spectrum of the arts, from dance to theater to music to literature and visual art. The founders’ hope is that these performances will breathe fresh life into the strong cultural ties between America and Ireland, create new partnerships, and appeal to a wide range of audiences throughout the country. 
    The Irish government has invested $5.2 million in this year of arts and culture – what some might consider a risky move in times of economic crisis. Imagine Ireland’s representatives were quick to address this question and confident in their response. New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, one of the speakers at the New York launch, stated:“The arts are particularly important in times of economic downturn. We should not forget about them; rather, we should treat the arts as an economic engine.” Speaker Quinn also commented on the great power of the arts to “fill up not only revenues, but also people’s hearts and souls.”
    Minister Hanafin echoed Speaker Quinn’s thoughts, expressing Imagine Ireland’s goal of reaching out to all corners of America’s Irish diaspora – and beyond. “Culture is the means by which most Americans encounter Ireland,” she explained. “It connects with the deep sense of pride and belonging of more than 40 million Irish-Americans and also with the many millions of Americans who love great art. We have invested in Imagine Ireland because the arts and culture are so vital to Ireland’s recovery and it will bring Irish culture to new audiences and generations across America.”
    Almost more impressive than the number of artists and events is the geographical scope of Imagine Ireland, which will extend far beyond the major tour destinations of New York and Los Angeles. Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Boston, and San Francisco are all set to be  hubs of activity, as are many other smaller towns and cities – from Chincoteague Island, VA to Bay City, MI.    
    “New York is amazing, we love New York,” said Fiach Mac Conghail, Director of Dublin’s  Abbey Theatre,  “but it’s not the entire United States. We think that it’s important for the Abbey to go to other cities that it has a connection with as well.” That’s precisely why the Abbey’s production of Mark O’Rowe’s new play Terminus, like so many of the other shows and events, will travel. In this case,  to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Durham, Middlebury, and Baltimore. People all throughout the states will now be able to share first-hand in Ireland’s rich cultural past and its rapidly evolving artistic future.

    It is likely that no other theatre in the English-speaking world is more identified with an individual playwright, and owes more to that playwright, than the Abbey Theatre does to Sean O’Casey (1880-1964).
    The Abbey’s productions of three O’Casey plays, The Shadow of Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926) – O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy – sustained the theatre in its early years, a fact publicly acknowledged by W.B. Yeats, an Abbey director.
    It was primarily these plays that accounted for the world-wide reputation of the Abbey and its magnificent company of actors: Barry Fitzgerald, F.J. McCormack, Cyril Cusack, Sara Allgood, Jack McGowran, Arthur Shields, Siobhan McKenna and many more.
    The Plough was the most controversial and arguably the best of these plays as it questioned the canonical heroism of some Irish patriots and satirized the love of war and bloodshed celebrated in the fulminations of Patrick Pearse.
    It was at the fourth night’s performance of The Plough that there was an audience riot at the Abbey, ostensibly over the appearance in the Act II pub scene of both the Irish tricolor and a lady of the evening, one Rosie Redmond. Legend has it that Yeats mounted the stage to quiet the rioters and said: “You have disgraced yourselves again. This is O’Casey’s apotheosis.”
    O’Casey moved to London after the Abbey productions of his trilogy and was estranged from the Abbey (and Yeats) for many years after Yeats rejected O’Casey’s next play, The Silver Tassie, in 1928.
    O’Casey remained in England for the rest of his life, married Eileen Carey and had three children, Breon, Niall, and daughter Shivaun who for many years ran the O’Casey Theatre Company in New York, which produced her father’s many plays and autobiographical works.
    On July 29, Shivaun was at the Abbey to lecture on her father’s work, an event coinciding with the Abbey’s current revival of The Plough and the Stars. Lisa Farrelly of the Abbey moderated the question and answer session with Shivaun before a packed and enthusiastic audience. 
    Shivaun spoke of her father with great warmth and affection and remembered falling asleep most nights as a young girl to the tap-tap sound of his typewriter in an adjacent room. His typewriter and his fountain pen, by the way, were not toys she and her brothers could play with. She also recalled Sean’s great affinity for the American GIs who were sent by the thousands to the south of England in the spring of 1944 in the lead-up to the Normandy invasion. He always remembered his days in America with fondness and had lifelong friendships with many Americans, including Eugene O’Neill, Lillian Gish and George Jean Nathan.
    The current run of The Plough at the Abbey is scheduled to end September 25, and this production directed by Wayne Jordan has received excellent reviews from the Dublin critics. 
    Shivaun also mentioned that one of her father’s great influences was James Larkin, who organized the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, a tribune of the Dublin working man, especially during the infamous lockout of 1913. The other major influence on O’Casey, personally and professionally, was G.B. Shaw, another Dubliner familiar with poverty and deprivation. Shaw became an O’Casey family mentor to the point of recommending to O’Casey where his children should go to school.
    Finally, Shivaun also mentioned O’Casey’s melancholy involvement with An Tóstal (Ireland At Home), an annual cultural festival inaugurated in 1953 and intended to celebrate the cultural, social and sporting events expressive of the Irish way of life.  O’Casey was invited to submit a play and he sent in The Drums of Father Ned. The Tóstal Council was chaired by the Lord Mayor of Dublin and its membership consisted of business and cultural leaders in the community. 
    It was the tradition that Archbishop John McQuaid would celebrate a mass at the Pro Cathedral to initiate the festival, and he agreed to do so in October 1958. Shortly thereafter somebody sent the Archbishop a program and drew his attention to the inclusion of an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses, the O’Casey play and three mime plays by Samuel Beckett. The Archbishop then wrote the Secretary of the Tóstal Council asking if it was true that Joyce and O’Casey were part of the drama program and shortly thereafter McQuaid withdrew his consent to the requested celebration of the mass.
    O’Casey became exasperated with the machinations of the Dublin hierarchy and the organizers of the festival and summarily withdrew his play. Once O’Casey withdrew, Beckett withdrew his three plays and the Ulysses adaptation was also canceled. 
Shivaun mentioned that her father was greatly saddened by the supine reaction of the Dublin cultural and business elite who simply caved in to the Archbishop’s arbitrary scuttling of this major cultural festival, an event of course which could never happen today.
    Eighty years on, modern Ireland has a new appreciation for O’Casey. The Plough was praised by audiences and critics alike. The Druid Theatre’s production of The Silver Tassie opened in Galway on August 23, also to rave reviews.
    Both these plays show us the terrible cost of warfare on the human experience.   They also show us that Sean O’Casey’s work is as relevant today as it ever was.

Christopher Fitz-Simon has served as literary manager and artistic director of the Abbey and Peacock Theatres. This year, the former marks its 100th year, and Fitz-Simon does a fine job of tracing the Abbey's centrality in Irish cultural life in "The Abbey Theatre: Ireland's National Theatre: The First 100 Years." Yet for all of Fitz-Simon's knowledge, it is the nearly 200 photos and other illustrations which best capture the richness and vitality for which Dublin's drama center has been known since 1904. From early stagings of J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World" and Sean O'Casey's "The Plough and the Stars" (which provoked rioting in the streets) to later acclaimed works by Frank McGuinness and Brian Friel, the contemporary history of Irish dramatic literature can be understood through the Abbey. This makes Fitz-Simon's book not only entertaining, but important. ($27.50 / 208 pages / Thames and Hudson)