For Irish Rep co-founder Ciarán O Reilly, establishing the theater was difficult enough but sustaining it for these 30 years with his able artistic partner Charlotte Moore has been even more of feat. Starting with Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars,” The Irish Repertory Theatre opened its doors in September 1988, with the mission to bring works by Irish and Irish American masters and contemporary playwrights to American audiences, provide a context for understanding the contemporary Irish American experience, and to encourage the development of new works focusing on the Irish and Irish American experience, as well as a range of other cultures.
In 1995, they made a permanent home in Chelsea in a former warehouse, where its three completely renovated floors allowed for both a Main Stage theater and a smaller studio space — the W. Scott McLucas Studio. The Irish Repertory Theatre is currently the only year-round theater company in New York devoted to bringing Irish and Irish American works to the stage. It has been recognized with a 2007 Jujamcyn Award, a special Drama Desk Award for “Excellence in Presenting Distinguished Irish drama,” and the Lucille Lortel Award for “Outstanding Body of Work.” In 2014, The Irish Repertory Theatre started renovating its home in Chelsea, which is now completed, and in 2017, it received an Obie Grant from the Obie Awards presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Village Voice. Its productions draw more than 35,000 audience members annually and are ever-increasing with most recent shows nearly sold out through their runs.
Given all this, their three-decade anniversary underway , the annual June gala has quite a lineup.
Q: With the gala coming up, tell me about what you looking forward as to the event?
CO: We’re a small off-Broadway theater company and it’s a great honor to have a former United States President, Bill Clinton, as our honoree and our own great notables coming such as Alec Baldwin, Judy Collins, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Then some of our wonderful company from over the years such as Melissa Errico, who has done so many shows, she’s a magical person, will be with us. Robert Mack, who did “The Dead” with us is performing. We’ve got Bill Whelan, the composer of Riverdance and he’s coming over to play his Riverdance tune for us.
Q: You’ve gotten this far. What’s next in the world of Irish theater for you two.
CO: Though we feel blessed with the audience we have, I certainly think we have a long, long way to go [in what we can offer]. Thirty years does not begin to cover the world of Irish theater, it’s just a start, a curtain raiser for what can be done. We’re a nation of playwrights that have produced such a wealth of work that if we were to go back to back with the plays over the years, I don’t think we’d finish it in a hundred years, the amount of theater that we have to expose to the good citizens of New York.
Q: Why do you think Ireland is a nation of playwrights?
CO: It may be a cliche to say it but we’re a nation of storytellers. It goes back to the DNA of sitting around the hearth and being entertained by someone telling a hearth story because there was very little else to do. You’re sitting there, you probably didn’t have enough money for candles to read by but you have your mouth and imagination so you sat around telling enough stories that kept people enthralled around a fireside for all those years. That led to people wanting to tell stories in a very energized and imaginative way. They took the language that was imposed on them, the English language, and made it their own. They used it in a colorful way. So between the dynamics of plot of telling the story and the beautiful language they use, you got an Irish playwright.
Q: it’s not only because they were stuck in the hearth and needed something to do; the Irish people didn’t ask for the trouble that came from the English so that might’ve helped provide with great fodder.
CO: They did not, but it’s what happened. I’m not saying the peasant in France was drinking champagne and putting on airs, but somewhere between perhaps things have happened… The weather affects what the Irish are like. Even the landscape informs what people are like. In the flat midlands of Ireland you have people that speak in a flat accent. Then when you go up to Donegal, people are up in the head in the hilly Donegal or down below in Kerry. Wherever they are, that’s where the magic comes from.
Q: Does that mitigates who you pick as actors; it is depending on the accents? Just kidding but does that add to the play — having the right accent?
CO: It totally adds to the play because there’s a musicality to the writing and if you have somebody who has that music in their bones and in their mouth, then that particular piece of music, which could be a play by Seán O’Casey, that person has that within them for it to flow out without effort. So it’s a huge deal to be able to actually know the accent and know the regional accents. Seán O’Casey didn’t just write about Dublin, he wrote about the little section that’s north of O’Connell Street, or Sackville Street at the time, He wrote about his neighbors and people within those few blocks and that’s what they sounded and spoke like.
Q: So when you chose the cast did they have to figure out the accents or was there a little leeway?
CO: We’re blessed with having a lot of people from Dublin and around the area, so it was second nature to them. There were some American actors who had to find their way in. It can be a challenge, I know this, I’m an actor myself. I know you don’t want to hear me do an American accent, I sound like John Wayne or something, it’s pretty bad even when I make my best efforts. So I have a huge amount of sympathy and a huge amount of admiration for American actors who take this on.
Q: Who sound funnier, Irish people trying to do an American accent or Americans trying to do an Irish accent?
CO: I think Irish people doing an American accent is pretty funny. Again, what is an American accent? Is it from The Bronx? Brooklyn? Is it from the Midwest, is it a Southern drawl? I know from experience that Irish and English people have an easier time doing a Southern American accent for whatever reason. They tend towards that whenever they do an American accent.
Q: You did some plays about Irish Americans and ones set outside of Ireland, but with some Irish themes. When did you decide your work can include that as well?
CO: You say Irish and Irish American, but that can have a very broad range. Like Eugene O’Neill is an Irish-American playwright but his stories are set here in the United States. He was never in Ireland in his lifetime, which was one of the mind blowing things because he spent a lot of time traveling around Europe, but he never made it over. There’s something I always quote from Jim Larkin, the great trade union leader back around 1913 and during the lockout in Dublin. He said the struggles of the Irish people are the struggles of the people all over the world. When we tell a story that might be set in Ireland, it might reflect issues around the world. It might be immigration if it’s of a social nature or it could be internal family conflict.
You have people here who are at our theater that aren’t necessarily Irish or Irish American. Half of our audience are just regular New York theater goers from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. We love it when they come and see an O’Casey play like “Juno and the Paycock” and in the family conflict they see themselves on that stage. It brings people together when they see these issues that we all face within a family. There’s a daughter who gets pregnant out of wedlock and though these days it’s not a curse, it was that then. There’s alcohol abuse, substance abuse, there’s all these things anyone can relate to.
Q: From the specific you get the general.
CO: The three plays we’re referring to are “The Plough and the Stars,” “Shadow of a Gunman,” and “Juno and the Paycock.” They’re set in different times but they’re still quite close together. One is 1916, the other is 1920,and the other is 1922 and those are very key times in Irish history. 1916 is obviously the rebellion where they first got their independence, then there’s the civil war, then the Irish war of independence. In those three different times there were explosions and implosions and then they were all trying to find their way out of it.
Q: Implosions and explosions described a lot of Irish plays.
CO: We also say it’s a comedy because only four people die in this play.
Q: How do you balance comedy, drama, and musicals in this relatively small space?
CO: We don’t ever think of it as a small space. It’s the oddest thing, why are people always saying it’s a small space? I’ve gone to some really tiny places and the reviews never say it’s a small space. But for some reason they come here and even though it has a depth here that’s as big as the depth of some Broadway theaters, it does not have the width or wing space, but it’s not a small space. Am I being defensive?
We have an audience that see just about everything we do and they’re very loyal. We have to mix it up and give them something different each time, so we’ll do a new play, a musical, a contemporary classic play in the vein of Brian Friel, or Conor McPherson, or Marina Carr or some living playwrights that are around even though, Lord of Mercy on Brian, he’s gone. We’ve built a reputation on a lot of these given good productions of plays that don’t necessarily got a lot of exposure in the United States.
Q: You also have the little theater downstairs for new talent and opportunities. How did you envision the relationship between the upstairs and downstairs theater? Is the downstairs meant to test talent to bring up stairs later?
CO: It has happened where people have moved from downstairs from upstairs, but a lot of time its on its own merit. There are shows we do that are risky shows that may not have a broader audience but are certainly very worthy pieces that would be experimental in their nature.
Q: Like Enda Walsh’s “Disco Pigs.”
CO: Well “Disco Pigs” ended up on the main stage here. We were originally going to do it in the studio but we decided to give it its full and it worked very well for us up here. There have been some Laoisa Sexton plays.
Q: I reviewed her “The Pigeon in the Taj Mahal” in Irish Examiner USA.
CO: Downstairs in the studio we’re delighted to do shows that are worthy pieces by Laoisa Sexton. We did “Pigeon in the Taj Mahal” and “For Love.” She’s a wonderful playwright and we’ve had so many terrific experiences with Marina Carr and “Woman and Scarecrow.” Charlotte directed a wonderful version of the “Three Small Irish Masterpieces” and that was a lovely show. There was “Riders to the Sea” and “Spreading the News,” I believe.
Q: You’ve created an ensemble without calling it one. You see these actors in a lot of different parts in the O’Casey cycle and over the years. It’s really fascinating to see how they transform into the roles they have done.
CO: We’ve got Michael Mellamphy, John Keating, and Terry Donnelly. We are really blessed with a terrific floating company. We started and called ourselves The Irish Repertory Theatre, but 30 years later, this is the first time we’re actually doing repertory with O’Casey. Those three plays are in rep. It took us 30 years to fulfill our mission, but here we are.
Q: You have a couple young actresses that are in your floating ensemble now.
CO: Meg Hennessy who’s a new young actress from Limerick, she was in “The Dead” at the Irish Historical Society, which we’ve done that for three years running now. She came in this year and played the role of Lilly then went right into “Shadow of a Gunman” and she’s in “Juno and The Paycock” and “The Plough and the Stars,” so she’s had a year’s work at Irish Rep.
Q: It really gives people a chance to see how actors operate.
C: It’s wonderful, it really is. To be able to dive into something and know that in even one day you have to switch off and become someone else, that keeps a lot of the acting muscles alive and vibrant.
Q: How different is your directing style from Charlotte or in picking plays?
CO: We don’t think of it in that way. I started out as an actor; I learned an enormous amount from Charlotte because Charlotte directed me in many things. She just trusts actors a lot and lets them find their own way, which I do a lot but I learned that from her. She gives encouragement and there’s very little negativity from her. Sometimes directors think it’s a positive thing too…
Q: Did you think the two of you would be working together 30 years later?
CO: No, god no. The fact that it’s still here and we’re still going after thirty years is… if I ever think about it I would probably think, “Wow!”
Q: Are there things you still plan on doing or wish you could revisit?
CO: We’ve revisited a good number of shows we enjoyed. I directed “The Emperor Jones” 10 years ago and we brought it back again last year with a new Emperor. The first one was John Douglas Thompson and he was a force to be reckoned with and wonderful in the role. So it was a great risk to bring it back with this other Nigerian actor, Obi Abili, who I had just met. And without having him read a line I said, “will you do it?”
My instincts were right on because he was terrific. The great thing about doing that show was when it came back and he really tore up the stage. Sitting in the audience for many, many of the shows was John Douglas Thompson himself and he was the first one to jump up and cheer and I love John for that. He felt like he really owned that role and I was worried he’d be a little upset by us going ahead without him even though he’s the busiest actor on Broadway and doesn’t have time for us anymore.
Q: So who else did you nurture?
CO: In our early days we worked with Brían O’Byrne , he started with us and did several seasons of plays. He’s been a huge success story, he’s been in so many movies and television shows, won Tonys, we love him.
Q: Were you excited by the success of “The Ferryman” — did it put a bigger light on Irish theater overall?
CO: I think it was a terrific production and I love many of the actors in it. It’s a great company. I didn’t get a chance to see the new American company, I saw it in Ireland, London and in New York for the first contingent, but I haven’t see Brian Darcy James do it. I hear he’s fantastic. I’m delighted for them all.
Q: What’s in the future for you?
CO: If you ask one thing I think we could use more of, it’d be works we create from scratch. We’d like to do more world premieres and commissions if we could find the funding for it. The growth of a theater company is to create new work. Even though we do very well with bringing stuff that’s not normally done, it’d be nice to create something that was done here.