John F Kennedy Centre presents Druid double Synge bill

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The prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is presenting

Galway's Druid theatre company in a double bill of The Shadow of the Glen and The Playboy of the Western World in the Terrace Theatre next month as part of the Center's etcetera! series. 

The two-play production is directed by Garry Hynes and is part of the company's "DruidSynge" - a celebration of the life and work of one of Ireland's greatest writers, John Millington Synge. 

Written in the summer of 1902, The Shadow of the Glen was the first of Synge's plays to be staged.  The one-act play is set in an isolated cottage in County Wicklow and tells of a loveless and decaying marriage of convenience between Nora and Dan Burke.  Synge's most famous work, The Playboy of the Western World tells of a man who boasts that he killed his father, only to become a local hero.  The play was first performed at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1907 and caused rioting due to the depiction of loose morals in a rural Ireland.

Born in County Dublin, Ireland in 1871, playwright and poet John Millington Synge wrote six plays before succumbing to Hodgkin's disease at age 37.  Synge's travels in Western Ireland inspired his best-known works including the plays The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, and The Well of the Saints, as well as his manuscript The Aran Islands.  He later served as a director of the Irish National Theatre Society and penned several articles focused on the troubles in West Ireland.

Founded in Galway in 1975, DRUID is the first professional theater company in Ireland outside Dublin and has been at the forefront of the development of Irish theater. DruidSynge, the company's critically acclaimed production of all six of John Millington Synge's plays on the same day, premiered at the Galway Arts Festival in 2005 and has since toured to Dublin, Edinburgh, Inis Meáin, Minneapolis and New York.  The company has had two artistic directors: Garry Hynes (1975-91 and 1995 to date) and Maeliosa Stafford (1991-94).

The actors in The Shadow of the Glen and The Playboy of the Western World appear with the special permission of Actors' Equity Association. The cast of The Shadow of the Glen will feature Tom Hickey as Dan Burke and Catherine Walsh as Nora Burke.  The cast of The Playboy of the Western World will feature Simon Boyle as Christy Mahon and Sarah-Jane Drummey as Pegeen Mike.

The plays are helmed by DRUID's founding artistic director, Garry Hynes, the first woman to win a Best Director Tony Award.   Set Design is by Francis O'Connor, Costume Design is by Kathy Strachan, Lighting Design is by Davy Cunningham, Sound Design is by John Leonard, Movement is by David Bolger and the original music is composed by Sam Jackson.

The Kennedy Center's etcetera! series features edgy international programming as well as companies from the United States.  Known for its standout originality, the interdisciplinary series of contemporary work began under the name Something New in 1991.  The series will present Australia's Bangarra Dance Theatre October 13-14, 2008.  Past performances in the series have included Happy Days with Fiona Shaw, and Ireland's Gate Theatre production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.