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Danville’s annual Eugene O’Neill Festival will be going international next year, with a new partnership between the town’s Eugene O’Neill Foundation and a similar organization in New Ross, Ireland.
In light of the fact that the foundation’s famed playwright namesake had roots in both Danville and New Ross, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House announced Sept. 18 that it would join with the O’Neill Ancestral Trust of Ireland to produce an international festival of his plays in fall 2018. The event will be called “One Festival, Two Countries.”
“This will put Danville on the international arts map, further defining Danville as a quality-of-life leader among Bay Area cities,” said Robert Storer, a town councilman. “Councilman Newell Arnerich and I will attend the festival in New Ross, and we encourage our friends and neighbors to join us.”
O’Neill — the only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and the recipient of four Pulitzer Prizes — lived at Tao House in Danville from 1937-44, where he wrote his final works. His father and grandfather, though, used to live in the village of Tinneranny, across the river from New Ross, before immigrating to America in 1851.
His Irish heritage was of utmost importance to him: “The one thing that explains more than anything about me is the fact that I’m Irish,” he said.
Currently, Danville’s 18th annual Eugene O’Neill Festival is almost over: this is the last weekend for performances of O’Neill’s “A Touch of the Poet” in the Old Barn at Tao House.
The inaugural “One Festival, Two Countries” will feature O’Neill play productions in Danville throughout September 2018 and in New Ross Oct. 11-14. One of the plays will be a co-production of the two festivals: “Hughie,” which will have an American director and cast, will first play in Danville and then travel to New Ross.
“One of the most gratifying things about this project is the friendships that have developed, both civic and personal,” said Dan McGovern, the president of the Danville foundation’s board and the American co-chair of “One Festival, Two Countries.” “Danville and New Ross are planning to enter into an official Friendship City relationship, and I could not have better Irish colleagues than my co-chair, Sean Reidy, and our academic advisor, Richard Hayes.”
