With Pam Brusoski, Jeff Davolt, April Ann Kline, and Michael Palmer
In discussion with Frances Howorth

In celebration of Actors’ Equity Association’s declaration of 2020 as #TheYearoftheStageManager, Pam Brusoski (A Child’s Christmas in Wales), Jeff Davolt (Lady G), April Ann Kline (A Touch of the Poet), and Michael Palmer (Pumpgirl) – four of Irish Rep’s most frequent stage managers – discuss their roles behind-the-scenes of your favorite productions.

PAMELA BRUSOSKI

Pamela has been a stage manager at Irish Repertory Theatre for 15 years and over 40 shows. Notable/favorite productions include Finian’s Rainbow, The Emperor Jones, Dancing at Lughnasa, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Molly Sweeney, and Freedom of the City. Broadway: Beauty and the Beast and Little Women. Selected Off-Broadway: Charles Grodin’s The Right Kind of People (Primary Stages,) A Last Dance for Sybil with Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis (New Federal Theatre,) The Mint Theatre Company, York Theatre Company, and Carnegie Hall. Pamela has also been a PSM at Pittsburgh Public Theater for the past 4 seasons. Favorite PPT shows include The Tempest and Indecent. MFA: Brooklyn College (CUNY).

JEFF DAVOLT

For IRT: Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregory, Dublin Carol, Love Noël, YES!, The Dead 1904, The Seafarer, Afterplay, The Weir, Sea Marks, The Burial at Thebes. Other NYC: Spamilton, Rock of Ages, The Great Divorce, After, DISASTER! The Musical, The Last Smoker in America, Lucy, Lenin’s Embalmers, End Days, Junie B. Jones, The HOWL Arts Festival, and several industrial shows. TV: The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (CBS), The History Makers (PBS). Regional: Seussical (National Tour), L’Histoire du soldat (TPO & BSO), Bernstein’s MASS, Matilda, Smokey Joe’s Café, The Full Monty, Man of La Mancha, Chicago, La Cage aux Follies, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.  Directing:  Suicide…Anyone?, Max & Ruby (National Tour), Dearest Mommie – The Musical, Greater Tuna, Sylvia, Sister Mary Ignatius / The Actor’s Nightmare, An Inspector Calls, Jake’s Women, and numerous AIDSWalks. Associate Production Manager – Harlem Stage (NYC). Graduate: University of Missouri – Columbia. Member: AEA/SDC/SMA.

APRIL ANN KLINE 

Some NYC credits include:  Irish Repertory Theatre (London Assurance, The O’Casey Cycle, Disco Pigs, Woody Sez; The Pigeon in the Taj Mahal); Gingold Theatrical Group (Caesar & Cleopatra); My Life On A Diet with Renee Taylor at St. Clement’s Theatre; Pearl Theatre Company (A Taste of Honey, No Exit); Red Bull Theatre (Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Dance of Death); Naked Angels Theatre (This Wide Night); Ma-Yi Theatre Company (The Romance of Magno Rubio). Favorite regional credits include Bay Street Theatre (Lend Me A Tenor, The Mystery of Irma Vep); Chester Theatre Company (The Retreat from Moscow); Long Wharf Theatre (The Romance of Magno Rubio).  April has also done various shows with the Juilliard School and the New School for Drama drama programs. April is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.  Love to my family and Marc.

MICHAEL PALMER 

NYC Credits include: Sabbath Girl, Pumpgirl, After, Daniel’s Husband, My Brilliant Divorce, The Dead 1904, Small World, The Hundred We Are, The Winter’s Tale, Drop Dead Perfect, The Rivals, Have I No Mouth, For Love, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wheelchair On My Face, Silent, Miracle On South Division Street, Bogboy, Fall To Earth, Tryst, My Scandalous Life, St. Nicholas, Exit Entrance, Mark Twain’s Blues. Regional credits include: Mr. Parker, Sabbath Girl, Relativity, Syncopation, Daniel’s Husband, Buyer & Cellar, The Immigrant, My Name Is Asher Lev, Small World, Playing the Assassin, Sex and Education, How The World Began, Class, The How And The Why, The Last Days of Mickey and Jean.

With Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann

Actor Aedín Moloney and National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann discuss James Joyce and Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom – the play they co-adapted from the final chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, which premiered at Irish Rep in the summer of 2019.

AEDÍN MOLONEY

Aedín is an award winning actress who has performed extensively in theatre, film, audio and TV, here in New York, London and Ireland. She is founder and producing artistic director of New York’s Fallen Angel Theatre Company. In 2017 she released an unabridged audio recording of Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy from Ulysses by James Joyce, “Reflections of Molly Bloom,” with music by her father, Paddy Moloney (The Chieftains). Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom was her 10th production with Irish Rep and her first adaptation. Previous performances at the Irish Rep include: The Dead: 1904, Dancing at Lughnasa, Playboy of the Western World, The Shadow of a Gunman and Airswimming (a co production with Fallen Angel). She originated the role of George Eliot in the acclaimed production of A Most Dangerous Woman (Best Actress 2013 NJ Footlights). Other recent roles of note include Women Without Men (The Mint) , The Alchemist (STNJ), When I was a Girl I used to Scream and Shout (Fallen Angel), Under Milk Wood (Hartford Stage). Her TV credits include: “The Exorcist”, “The Knick”, “The Bill”, “The Moth”, “Ballykissangel” & “Law & Order SVU”. Film roles include the role of James Joyce’s sister, Eva, in the movie “Nora”, “Far & Away” and “Agnes Browne”. She has produced and directed several successful off broadway hits with Fallen Angel Theatre, including My Brilliant Divorce, starring Melissa Gilbert. Aedín was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland.

COLUM MCCANN

Colum McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honours, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organisation, Narrative 4, and he teaches at the MFA program in Hunter College. He lives in New York with his wife, Allison, and their three children. colummccann.com

With Ciarán O’Reilly, Úna Clancy, and James Pethica

Irish literary scholar James Pethica (Professor of Theater and English, Williams College), actor Úna Clancy (Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregory), and director Ciarán O’Reilly (Dublin Carol) discuss the history and impact of Lady Gregory and the creation of recent Irish Rep production Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregory. 

LADY AUGUSTA GREGORY

(1852-1932) Lady Gregory was an Irish playwright, folklorist, theatre director, and patron remembered as a major figure in the Irish Literary Revival and co-founder of The Abbey Theatre. She was born Isabella Augusta Persse in County Galway, Ireland, to an Anglo-Irish gentry family. She married Sir William Gregory in 1880, and the couple participated in the literary and artistic salons of London. When Sir William died in 1892, Lady Gregory returned to Ireland and rediscovered an interest in the Irish language and Irish folklore, which she collected and published while organizing Irish lessons. In 1896, she met Yeats and became invested in creating an Irish national theatre as a patron, fundraiser, administrator, and playwright, eventually founding the Abbey Theatre and remaining an active director until declining health led her to retire in 1928.

JAMES PETHICA

James L. Pethica teaches in the Theatre and English Departments at Williams College. He has published widely in Irish literature – particularly on W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey Theatre – as well as Modern drama and poetry, and contemporary poetry. Winner of the Shakespeare Prize as an undergraduate at Merton College, Oxford, Pethica received his D. Phil. from Oxford in 1987. He is the immediate past director of the Yeats International Summer School. Pethica is currently completing the authorized biography of Lady Gregory for Oxford University Press, as well as a volume on Gregory’s collaborations with Yeats.

ÚNA CLANCY

Úna Clancy played Lady Augusta Gregory in Irish Rep’s Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregory,  and Mrs. Henderson, Mrs. Tancred and Mrs. Gogan in Irish Rep’s  The O’Casey Cycle . For Trinity Players Dublin, she performed in Travesties, The Country Wife and The Lark, among other plays. At the Dublin Theatre Festival she worked with Moveable Feast Theater Company, under the direction of Robert Gordon of London’s Guild Hall. She is a member of The Drilling Company, N.Y., where she has performed in Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and All’s Well That Ends Well. With WalkupArts she did The Jester and The Dragon, a one-woman-show at The Tank. She has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival many times. Thank you to Ciarán and Charlotte for keeping the spirit of Lady Gregory alive in the work you do here.

CIARÁN O’REILLY

Favorite directing credits include: Lady G: Plays and Whisperings of Lady Gregory, Dublin Carol, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Seafarer, The Dead, 1904, Shining City, Off the Meter, On the Record, The Weir (Calloway Nom.), Banished Children of Eve, The Emperor Jones, (Callaway Award, O’Neill Credo Award, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Lucille Lortel Nom.), The Hairy Ape (Drama Desk Drama League and Callaway Nom.), Philadelphia, Here I Come! (Drama Desk Nom). Irish Rep acting roles include Da, Juno and the Paycock, Dancing at Lughnasa, Molly Sweeney, Candida, Aristocrats, A Whistle in the Dark, The Shaughraun, and The Irish and How They Got That Way. He appeared in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of A Touch of the Poet with Gabriel Byrne. He has appeared at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and made his Broadway debut in The Corn is Green. Films include “The Devil’s Own” (starring Harrison Ford), “Law & Order,” “The Irish…and How They Got That Way,” “Third Watch,” “Bored to Death,” and “The Knick.” Ciarán has recently been inducted in to the Irish America Hall of Fame and has been awarded the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad, 2019 by President Michael D. Higgins.

 

With Bill Irwin
In Discussion with Seth Bauer

Tony Award winner Bill Irwin discusses Samuel Beckett and his recent Irish Rep production On Beckett in conversation with Irish Rep Individual Giving Manager Seth Bauer. This special episode is in honor of Samuel Beckett’s birthday.

Bill Irwin

Bill Irwin is a Tony Award winning actor, director, writer, and clown. Original works include The Regard of Flight; Largely New York (Four Tony Nominations); Fool Moon; Old Hats, The Happiness Lecture; and others. He has played in many Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional stage productions, including, ON BECKETT, an evening of passages from Samuel Beckett’s work at Irish Repertory Theatre, The Iceman Cometh, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play), The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; Waiting For Godot (2009 for a Drama Desk Award nomination); Endgame; The Tempest; Texts for Nothing; Garden of Earthly Delights; Accidental Death of An Anarchist; Showboat – and the Tony Award winning Fool Moon, which he created with David Shiner. On television, Irwin appears as Mr. Noodle of “Elmo’s World” and Carey Loudermilk of “LEGION”. The Regard of Flight (PBS) with Doug Skinner, Michael O’Connor, and Nancy Harrington. Film credits include “Rachel Getting Married”, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”, “Eight Men Out”, “Interstellar”, “Stepping Out”, “Unsilent”, and more. Irwin was an original member of Kraken, a theatre company directed by Herbert Blau, and was also an original member of the Pickle Family Circus of San Francisco with Larry Pisoni and Geoff Hoyle. Irwin is the grateful recipient of MacArthur, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.

Seth Bauer

Plays include Early in the Mourning, The Lysistrata Project, The Karma Cookie, Over the Line, Dahlia, Iphigenia, The Umbrella Play, The Burglar of Suburbia, The Tip, and School Play (co-author).  His works are published by Dramatists Play Service, Smith & Krause, and Samuel French.  He is currently engaged to write two screenplays including Across the Divide, a WWII love story and Otello, de Negros which is scheduled for shooting in the Philippines in 2021.  He divides his time between Bucks County and New York where he proudly serves as the Individual Giving Manager of Irish Repertory Theatre.