Noted Irish directors and actors will be among the participants in a symposium on issues in contemporary Irish film Thursday-Sunday, Feb. 1-4, in the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will feature panels, lectures and discussions with 21 prominent scholars, writers, directors and actors. Among these are Irish directors Neil Jordan and Jim Sheriden and actors Stephen Rea and Donal Donnelly. Discussion topics will range from "The Politics of Tradition" to "Acting Irish at Home and Away."
The conference coincides with what would have been James Joyce's 119th birthday on Feb. 2, and a special reception will take place on that day at 5:30 p.m. in Rm. 208 of the Whitney Humanities Center. Joyce established Ireland's first movie theater in Dublin in 1909. Since then, film has become central to Irish culture.
"In Ireland more than in any other country, there stands between literature and cinema the literal stage of the theater and the figurative stage of politics, where heretofore the word has dominated the image," says conference organizer Dudley Andrew, professor of comparative literature, and professor and co-chair of film studies at Yale.
"Our symposium will analyze the diversity and range of the aesthetic and social interactions among stage, screen and politics," he adds. "It will embrace questions concerning Irish performativity, the transformation of Irish tradition, and the shifting contours of Irishness itself in the global perspective, produced by the successful export of national cultural products such as films, pop music and 'Riverdance.'"
The symposium will include screenings of the films "The Dead," "Michael Collins," "Passages from Finnegan's Wake," "The Crying Game," "My Left Foot" and sections of "Rising of the Moon" and "I Went Down."
The program will open at 7 p.m. on Thursday with a lecture titled "Visualizing the Voice" by Luke Gibbons of Notre Dame University's Keough Center for Irish Studies.
A new play, "Dolly West's Kitchen," will be performed in conjunction with the symposium. Written by Frank McGuinness and directed by Murray Biggs, associate professor of English and theater studies at Yale, the play will be staged Wednesday-Saturday, Jan. 31-Feb. 3 in Berkeley College Theater, 205 Elm St.
At 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 2, Irish directors Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan, and Irish actors Stephen Rea and Donal Donnelly, will join Biggs in a discussion of "Acting Irish at Home and Away."
Jordan wrote the screenplays for and directed the films "Mona Lisa," "The Crying Game," "The Butcher Boy," "Michael Collins" and "The End of the Affair," among others, and is also a novelist. Sheridan's directing credits include the acclaimed "My Left Foot."
Rea, who was nominated for an Oscar for best actor for his role in "The Crying Game," also appeared in "The End of the Affair," as well as numerous other films. He cofounded with Brian Friel the Field Day Theatre Company. Donnelly began his acting career on the stage and has since appeared in "The Dead" and in numerous other movie and television roles in Britain, Ireland and the United States.
At 4 p.m. on Friday, noted Irish poet, novelist and editor Seamus Deane will lecture. Deane, the general editor of "The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing," has written numerous collections of poetry and the novel "Reading in the Dark," which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In addition to Biggs, other Yale participants include Joseph Roach, the Charles and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater; and David Bromwich, the Bird White Housum Professor of English.
The symposium is co-sponsored by the University of Notre Dame's Keough Center for Irish Studies, the Whitney Humanities Center and the Yale Film Studies Program.
A complete schedule of symposium events is available on the Whitney Humanities Center website at www.yale.edu/whc.
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