Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies and Lewis Center for the Arts presents the Ireland and Shakespeare Symposium, a one-day symposium of debate and performance centered on Irish versions and adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, with contributions from leading Irish directors, actors and critics: Mark Burnett, Bradin Cormack, Katherine Hennessey, Garry Hynes, Patrick Lonergan, Barry McGovern, Conall Morrison, Fintan O’Toole, Lynne Parker, Owen Roe, Robert Sandberg, James Shapiro, Clair Wills, and Michael Wood.
Beginning Saturday, March 5 from 9:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the James M. Stewart ’32 Theater at 185 Nassau Street on the Princeton University campus. A pre-symposium lecture is scheduled for Friday, March 4 at 4:30 p.m. by Columbia University Professor James Shapiro, author of 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.
FREE and open to the public; no tickets or reservations required.
The symposium is supported in part by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Performance Central, the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project in the Council of the Humanities, Princeton University’s English Department, and Global Shakespeare.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
FRIDAY, MARCH 4
4:30 p.m. | Fund for Irish Studies Lecture: James Shapiro on “Shakespeare and Ireland”
5:30 p.m. | Reception
SATURDAY, MARCH 5
9:15 a.m. | Introduction
9:30 – 11:00 a.m. | Staging Shakespeare in Ireland
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Screening of the film Mickey B, directed by Tom Magill
2:00 – 3:30 p.m. | Debating Shakespeare in Ireland
4:00 – 5:30 p.m. | Performing Shakespeare in Ireland
PARTICIPANT BIOS:
MARK BURNETT is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast and author of more than ten books on Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays.
BRADIN CORMACK is a professor in the English Department at Princeton University who studies early modern and Renaissance literature, with a focus on poetry and drama as they relate to law, the bookish disciplines, and intellectual culture more generally.
KATHERINE HENNESSEY is a Research Fellow with the Global Shakespeare program at the University of Warwick and Queen Mary University of London. She researches Middle Eastern as well as Irish drama, and is the author of Shakespeare on the Arabian Peninsula (2016).
GARRY HYNES is founding artistic director of Druid Theatre Company and served as artistic director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. She has worked with The Royal Shakespeare Company and The Royal Court (UK), and with Second Stage and Manhattan Theater Club in New York; with The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C; for Center Theater in Los Angeles and with the Spoleto Festival (USA). She was the first woman to win a Tony Award for direction in 1998 for The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
PATRICK LONERGAN is a Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at National University of Ireland Galway. His research is on contemporary Irish drama, Shakespeare and Ireland, theatre and social media, and globalization and performance.
BARRY MCGOVERN is an actor who has appeared in eight productions of Shakespeare’s plays. A former member of the RTE Players and the Abbey Theatre Company, in recent years he has mainly been associated with the Gate Theatre, especially their various Beckett productions. He has taught at the University of California at Davis and has spent the recent fall semester teaching at Notre Dame University.
CONALL MORRISON is a Dublin-based director and writer. Most recently, he directed La Traviata for the English National Opera and The Taming of The Shrew for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
FINTAN O’TOOLE is a visiting lecturer in the Program in Theater at Princeton and one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals. He has served as a drama critic for The Irish Times, New York Daily News, Sunday Tribune (Dublin), and In Dublin Magazine. His books on theater span a wide range of topics, from his biography of Richard Brinsley Sheridan to whatever is now appearing on Irish stages.
LYNNE PARKER is artistic director and co-founder of Rough Magic Theatre Company and an associate artist of Charabanc Theatre Company. Recent directorial projects include the world premiere of Hilary Fannin’s Famished Castle and The Train, a new musical by Arthur Riordan and Bill Whelan, both for Rough Magic, and Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf (Tron Theatre, Glasgow), Stewart Parker’s Northern Star and The Provok’d Wife by John Vanbrugh (The Lir Academy).
OWEN ROE is an Irish actor last seen on stage as an aging Romeo in a re-imagining of Romeo & Juliet by Ben Power at The Project Theatre in Dublin. In addition to his stage work, he is currently appearing as Count Odo in the hit series, Vikings, and has been featured in an array of television and film productions.
ROBERT SANDBERG is acting director of Princeton’s Program in Theater and a professor of English and Theater. He has been teaching playwriting, acting, and dramatic literature at Princeton since 1995 and received the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014. His plays have been seen in Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Panama, and South Korea as well at theaters throughout the U.S.
JAMES SHAPIRO is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985. He is the author of several books on Shakespeare, most recently, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (2015). He is currently the Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater in New York City.
CLAIR WILLS is the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Chair of Irish Letters, Chair of the Fund for Irish Studies and a Professor of English at Princeton. Her most recent book is The Best Are Leaving: Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture.
MICHAEL WOOD is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is on the Advisory Committee for Princeton’s Fund for Irish Studies. His most recent book is Literature and the Taste of Knowledge.
