| Brendan Opens in Boston  Brendan,
a new work by Irish-born playwright Ronan Noone, is being premiered by
Boston University’s renowned Huntington Theatre this fall.
The play explores the humorous and touching experiences of a recent Irish
immigrant as he battles homesickness while looking for love and meaning
in his adopted country. It runs from October 12-November 11 at the Boston
Center for the Arts in the South End.
Noone was born in Newry, County Down in 1970. He moved to the US in 1994
and settled on Martha’s Vineyard, where he painted houses and began
to write.
He submitted his first play, The Lepers of Baile Baiste, to Boston University’s
MFA program, where it caught the attention of Nobel Laureate playwright
Derek Walcott, who invited him to join the writing program. Lepers won
the National Playwriting Award, and was produced at the Kennedy Center
in Washington.
His second play, The Blowin, was produced by Gabriel Byrne at the Irish
Arts Center in New York in 2005 and won the coveted Elliot Norton Award
in Boston.
Another of Noone’s one-man plays, The Atheist, was premiered by
Huntington Theatre this past September, starring Campbell Scott and directed
by Justin Waldman.
During the run of Brendan, the Huntington Theatre has slated two events
to complement the play.
On Saturday, October 27, Brendan Cronin, Irish-born master chef and culinary
arts
professor at Endicott College, presents a cooking course at the Boston
Center for Adult Education entitled Comfort Food and Plays of Ireland.
The lecture and cooking demonstration is followed by the afternoon matinee.
On Sunday, November 4, Harvard scholar Joyce Flynn, an authority on Irish-American
theatre, delivers a lecture at Huntington’s Humanities Forum that
examines Brendan in the context of drama by the Irish Diaspora. The lecture
follows the matinee.
– By Michael P. Quinlin
For more details, visit www.irishmassachusetts.com/ events-Oct07.htm
or www.huntingtontheatre.org.
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