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Celebrating its 18th year, the annual Eugene O’Neill Festival promises a lively mix of Irish “blarney,” music and two plays this September, with a focus on this year’s theme “telling tales.”
“We want the festival to reflect the experience of the Irish both in Ireland and America,” said Eric Fraisher Hayes, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation’s director of artistic programs.
It will open with performances, by the Role Players Ensemble, of Irish playwright John Millington Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Village Theatre from Sept. 1-17.
The second play, O’Neill’s “A Touch of the Poet” will be presented from Sept. 16-30 in the Old Barn theater at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site — where O’Neill, the only American playwright to be honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature, lived from 1937 to 1944 and wrote his most well-recognized plays.
Edward Nattenberg and Hayes will be directing.
“Both plays feature characters who swear by a fantastic story of heroic deeds only to have their stories catch up with them,” Hayes said. “Their reckonings are both comedic and tragic, displaying the resilience of the Irish people.”
The festival’s musical event, “Ballads and Blarney: An Evening of Traditional Irish Music and Song,” is scheduled to occur at 7 p.m. Sept. 7 at the Museum of the San Ramon Valley.
The program will feature Donagh McKeown of San Francisco’s Irish Cultural Center, mixing storytelling and music with beer and pretzels.
Lastly, the festival will include “The Secrets of O’Neill’s Danville” — a guided walking tour of downtown Danville on Sept. 9, departing at 1 p.m. from the O’Neill Commemorative on Front Street — and the second annual “Hike to Tao House” on Sept. 10, beginning at 9 a.m. from downtown Danville to Tao House.
The festival is sponsored by the O’Neill Foundation and Tao House, serving in partnership with the National Park Service.
Tickets for the two featured theater productions and related festival events are on sale now, available at www.villagetheatreshows.com or by calling 314-3400.
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