George C. Heslin

The Irish Examiner USA Newspaper's Man of the Year 2010

On a Sunday night in Limerick, most of the bars are filled with football watchers. But George C. Heslin, Origin's handsome, soft-spoken Artistic Director has found a cozy, upholstered, empty place for us to talk - an insider's achievement. This is his hometown, though he now calls New York home. The producer and founder of the 1st Irish Festival lives in two worlds.

"In New York, I feel a minute away from Ireland, but here I feel a million miles from New York. New York is a crossroads - so many people pass through it."

In his own way, George himself is a kind of crossroads - a hub of dialogue between Irish and American actors, directors, presenters and audiences. He's the Irish Examiner's choice for Man of the Year.

Speaking of the decision to honor George, publisher Paddy McCarthy said, "He has done so much good in the Irish community in New York and in America, and brought so many people together from both the states and home. He was a natural choice."

George is soft-spoken, polite and direct. An interview with him is also always a dialogue. His honesty and humility are somewhat unusual in theatre, where the pain of rejection leads many people to an armor of ego -and they are very unusual in the world of movers and shakers - to which George now definitely belongs. That honesty is completely disarming.

This past summer I spoke to him about the Festival at Café Reggio in the West Village, where I first interviewed George for the New York Times when 1st Irish was about in 2008 - less than a year after George first thought it up.

In three short years that brainchild of George's has come a long way - steadily growing in prestige - not to mention buzz factor.

On the plane home, I tell the woman next to me, an American living in Connemara, that I had been in Ireland for the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival (watch this space for a wrap up coming soon). She looks puzzled and asks, "was that just in New York?" I realize she means 1st Irish. Buzz.

Limerick, says George, sipping a glass of water, is "a Georgian city." On the street where much of Angela's Ashes, the film based on Frank McCourt's memoir of childhood in Limerick, George says that the Hollywood people painted the doors black and grey - when in reality Georgian doors are red, blue and yellow!

It was never, literally, as grim as it was painted. Also, he points out, much of that film was shot in Cork - which offended people there. They didn't get proper credit for their slums. He loves being home.

"I think I will be spending more time here in the next few years," George says. In a dream future he'd run the Festival in New York and also do something at the Bell Arts Center - where he got his start.

George was a delegate to the Irish Theatre Institute for the Dublin Theatre Festival. In between seeing maybe ten shows, George also met with funders, presenters, producers.

To Irish theatre makers, he's a producer from New York. Not only does the 1st Irish Festival presents work from all over Ireland, it also produces American-Irish companies. And some of its shows are covered in the city's top papers and websites.

Among the Festival's prominent supporters are Culture Ireland, the Irish Government, the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sports; the Irish Consulate in New York City; the Northern Ireland Bureau and Tourism Ireland (this paper is a sponsor as well).

You'd think being an American producer was a long-term goal, but like many things in George's life, it was just a door that opened which he walked through.

It was his father, George senior, who sent George to America. Australia was where George planned to go, following several successful seasons acting in London and Dublin.

As he remembers, he literally was packing when the telephone rang. It was his father. He asked, "guess what came in the mail today?"

It was a green card. A big movie buff, Dad loved America. But his son found it hard.

"For the first six years, I didn't consider it my base. I thought, why am I here? My radar for acting had always been London."

The second youngest of five, George had studied with Marie Cummins in Limerick who, he says, "inspired a whole generation of students." His local high school even had a show on in Limerick's prestigious Bell Arts Center.

George was tagged to represent Limerick in the National Irish Youth Theatre, which presents a show with young actors from each county, in Dublin. He played Francis Nurse in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

After leaving school he did an acting course at the Abbey, then an internship at RTE, followed by a stint at Dublin's Gate Theatre as an assistant stage manager. Then he attended Trinity College, majoring in drama.

After college he moved to London, and took a job at the King's Head, a small pub theatre, in Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come! with Eamonn Kelly. The show transferred to the West End and ran for eight months.

Immediately after it closed he began performing in Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, written and directed by Billy Russell, also at the King's Head, a show inspired by the AIDS quilt.

Cast member Brendan Coyle leant George a copy of Challenge for the Actor by Uta Hagen - and it changed his life. In a way, the New York-based acting maestro prompted George's move to America as much as the windfall of the green card. The exercises in the book inspired him.

One night on stage he even decided to try one - a simple exercise in which the actor mentally replaces members of the audience with objects that his character would see. It was electrifying and also startling.

He realized he wanted to delve deeper - but not onstage in a show already up and running, where it could throw him out of the world of the play. At Trinity he hadn't encountered this work, and he wanted to study more.

Not long after he arrived n New York in 1994, he learned Hagen was holding auditions for a master class. He auditioned and got in. He was in her class in 1994-95 and again in 1996-97. The class hit him so hard that he later named his theatre company after her ideas.

"Uta talks about finding a source for a language," so he produced his first play in Ireland as a company called Source Theatre. Back in New York, he learned there was a local company already had that name. A friend suggested Origin.

That first play by Source, by the way, was by a fellow George met by chance at a reception in Dublin. The man, who worked in a supermarket, admitted he, like George, loved the theatre. "I wanted to direct, he said he wanted to write - but he didn't want to show me his plays." But George nagged, and finally the man relented. That young man's name? Mark O'Rowe, known today as one of the major voices in newer Irish writing. The play was Run Down.

In New York, George also first presented a play by Enda Walsh. It's almost uncanny how George attracts the right people at the right time, not just supporters, but major talents to support.

Only a few months after emigrating, he was in a master class with the one person he admits he would want to have dinner with, alive or dead.

Still, he continued hopping back and forth over the ocean, not sure where he belonged. He missed his family in Ireland, missed the social life in Dublin with his fellow actors - and though he was growing as an artist he hadn't put down roots.

Coordinating one of the stages for the Guinness Fleadh Festival in 1998 connected him with a number of East Village artists.

Then his mother passed away in 1999. After returning to New York, he passed a church on 46th Street. He went in and offered up a prayer: "Lord, I need a sign and I need it fast."

The very next day he had an audition with the Virginia Stage Company, and ended up working with them for a year.

Regional Theatre jobs then include the Pittsburgh Public Theatre and New York's Roundabout. He also performed in the Broadway tour of Marie Jones' Stones in His Pockets. The Broadway tour, as well as his stints in Regional Theatre, showed him America beyond New York - and helped him understand the country he finally decided to call home. He gave up his Dublin apartment.

"They say it takes about seven years to become American," George considers. "There were about 25 people I knew who came over when I did. 19 or 20 of them have gone home now." 2001 was George's seventh year. In 2002, he founded Origin Theatre, whose mission is to present American premieres of European playwrights.

And in 2008, he launched 1st Irish, in part due to frustration at the lack of representation of contemporary Irish work in New York.

In three years, 1st Irish has presented the work of 48 playwrights. This year alone, the Festival presented 16 playwrights in 13 venues. A day long symposium on Irish theatre included a one-on-one with Druid Theatre's Garry Hynes (whose The Silver Tassie was, for me, one of the highlights of the Dublin Theatre Festival) with playwright Belinda McKeown.

"It does bring the community together," George says. "It still amazes me that the idea hasn't been thought of before. This year we had 44 productions apply for spots! I don't think there are even 44 theatre companies in Ireland!" The Festival will probably not get bigger in scale - as it is, it's a marathon - but it will grow in other ways.

As a delegate to the Irish Theatre Institute to the Festival, he watched with one eye in Ireland and one eye in New York. Impressed particularly with the younger companies, including a work in progress by Brokentalkers (who brought Silver Stars to New York's "Under the Radar" Festival last year, and whom I covered for the New York Times), he always considers "would a New York audience like this?"

He's not thinking out loud: he's actually asking me. He wants my answer. It is, seriously, disarming.

Though while in Limerick he thinks about returning, he would always call New York home too. And New York's famous fast pace, for George, is calming. "It suits my energy. Hope is what I love about New York. The sun shines 52 weeks a year."

Bringing that energy back home - to each home - has brought light into a lot of lives. Irish Examiner congratulates George C. Heslin.