AN IRISH PLAY

Full-length comedy-drama / 2w, 5m

Amateur actors in Cork City, Ireland, convene at their local pub theatre for the first read-through of a new “Irish play,” written by an American. What begins as a comedic examination of Irish theatre and identity becomes by evening's end a character drama of strong emotional force. 

An Irish Play was supported by a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for travel and independent study in Ireland. The play premiered at Brown University’s Leeds Theatre, directed by John Emigh, and received the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Prize from The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. The play was subsequently produced by Milwaukee Irish Arts and performed at the Acting Irish International Theatre Festival in Toronto, where it was awarded “Outstanding Production.”

“‘You’re very deficient if there’s nothing invisible in your life,’ says Tish in Act II. If his play is any indication, O’Brien seemed to be haunted, richly, by the invisible—the legend of Brian Boru, the spirit of the Irish, and the enigma of theater itself.”

—Brian Healy, The Daily Herald