Round Table – the theatre of Tom Murphy
This round table celebrates the work of one of the most important Irish playwrights of all times – Tom Murphy – by gathering some of the most significant commentators and collaborators of his work: Fintan O’Toole, Nicholas Grene, Jane Brennan, and Alan Gilsenan.
It also marks the launch of the Tom Murphy Collection (Iluminuras, 2019), organized and introduced by Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, including four plays translated by Domingos Nunez, with the support of Literature Ireland: Um assovio no escuro/A Whistle in the Dark (1961); O concerto de Gigli/The Gigli Concert (1983); Bailegangaire/Bailegangaire (1985); and Trilogia de Alice/Alice Trilogy (2005).
📅 October 27th
🕤 14:00-16:00 Brazil/18:00-20:00 Ireland
💻 Live on PPGI UFSC YouTube Channel
*This event offers a certificate of attendance. Information about certificates will be given during the talk.
Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, Co. Galway, in 1935, and died in Dublin in 2018. He was a multi-award-winning playwright whose work is produced to great acclaim throughout the world. His plays include: On the Outside (w. Noel O’Donoghue); A Whistle in the Dark; Famine; The Orphans; A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant; The Morning after Optimism, The White House; On the Inside; The Sanctuary Lamp; The J. Arthur Maginnis Story; The Blue Macushla; The Gigli Concert; Conversations on a Homecoming; Bailegangaire; A Thief of a Christmas; Too Late for Logic; The Patriot Game; The Wake; The House; Alice Trilogy; and Brigit.
Fintan O’Toole is one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals. He is a columnist for The Irish Times and Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton. He also contributes to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Granta, The Observer, and other international publications. His books on theatre include works on William Shakespeare, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom Murphy – The Politics of Magic: The Work and Times of Tom Murphy. His books on politics include Ship of Fools; Enough is Enough; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; and, most recently, We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958.
Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His books include: The Politics of Irish Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1999); Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2002); Talking about Tom Murphy (Carysfort, 2002); Yeats’s Poetic Codes (Oxford University Press, 2008); Home on the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, (co-edited with Chris Morash) (Oxford University Press, 2016); and The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer (Bloomsbury, 2017). His most recent book is Farming in Modern Irish Writing (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Jane Brennan is an award-winning Irish actor. Her career spans 40 years in theatre, film, TV and radio. She has performed in many productions at the Abbey Theatre and the Gate Theatre, in Dublin, as well as the Druid Theatre, in Galway. She has toured extensively both nationally and internationally to The Edinburgh, Sydney, Spoleto, Barbican and Lincoln Centre Festivals. Her many roles include performances in plays by J. M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Tom Kilroy, Seamus Heaney, Martin McDonagh, and Nancy Harris, for example – and in Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming; Bailengangaire; On the Outside and On the Inside; A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant; The House; The Wake; Alice Trilogy; and Brigit.
Alan Gilsenan is an award-winning Irish writer, film-maker and theatre director. His diverse body of film work extends across documentary, feature films and experimental work. His many productions include the feature film Unless; Sing on Forever, a screen biography of Tom Murphy; Meetings with Ivor, a cinema documentary about the radical psychiatrist Ivor Browne; the experimental film A Vision: A Life of WB Yeats; the documentary series Daniel O’Connell: Forgotten King of Ireland; and a film installation inspired by Joyce’s Ulysses for Dublin’s new MOLI (Museum of Literature Ireland) entitled ULYSSES | FILM. Gilsenan has just completed a new film dealing with memory and abuse The Days of Trees and a documentary The Seven Ages of Nöel Browne about the controversial figure who challenged conservative Catholic Ireland in the 1950’s.
Opening and closing: Ambassador of Ireland Seán Hoy; Consul General of Ireland Eoin Bennis; Deputy Consul Rachel Fitzpatrick.
Moderation: Vincent Woods and Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos
Vincent Woods is an Irish writer and broadcaster whose plays include At the Black Pig’s Dyke, A Cry from Heaven, and several plays for radio. Poetry collections are The Colour of Language and Lives and Miracles. He co-edited The Turning Wave: Poems and Songs of Irish Australia, and Fermata: Writings Inspired by Music (with Eva Bourke). Other publications are Leaves of Hungry Grass: Poetry and Ireland’s Great Hunger and Borderlines (with Henry Glassie). With Edwina Guckian, he co-directed and produced the film Bealach an Fhéir Ghortaigh/Hunger’s Way for Strokestown International Poetry Festival 2021. He has been Writer in Residence at NUI Galway and has scripted and presented many arts programmes and documentaries on RTÉ Radio. He directs the Iron Mountain Literature Festival in Leitrim and is a member of Aosdána.
Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos is a member of the Postgraduate Programme in English at UFSC, Vice-coordinator of NEI – Núcleo de Estudos Irlandeses da UFSC, and an executive member of IASIL – The International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. Her publications as editor or co-editor include: Ilha do Desterro – Contemporary Irish Theatre (2010); Coleção Brian Friel (Hedra, 2013); Coleção Tom Murphy (Iluminuras, 2019); Ilha do Desterro – The Irish Theatrical Diaspora (2020); and Contemporary Irish Documentary Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2020). She is also the production director of Cia Ludens, the Brazilian theatre company dedicated to Irish Theatre.
Event organized by: Embassy of Ireland in Brazil; Consulate General of Ireland in São Paulo; Postgraduate Programme in English at UFSC; Núcleo de Estudos Irlandeses of UFSC; Cia Ludens.
