Milo O’Shea gives a fine ‘Hebrew Lesson’ at The Irish Arts’ Centre

Milo O'Shea and Dr. Art Hughes
Reception at Irish Arts Centre, New York

Guest Blogger Dr. Art Hughes,
Fulbright Professor of Irish Language, NYU.

Dr. Art Hughes, MA, MèsL, PhD is Senior Fulbright Irish Language Scholar for 2009/10. He is a Visiting Professor at Glucksman Ireland House, New York University. He is Director of Irish Language Programmes at the University of Ulster in Belfast. His doctoral thesis was study of the Gaelic dialect of the Bluestack Mountains, Co. Donegal. he is a prominent scholar in the field of Celtic linguistics and literature. He has written and/or edited 15 books (in English, Irish, French and Breton). He is also the Chair of The McCracken Cultural Society and founder of Ben Madigan Press. Recent publications include The Great Irish Verb Book and The Big Drum a translation of Seosamh Mac Grianna's novel An Druma Mór – he is currently preparing a film script for the same. He also has recently collaborated on an anthology of Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill in Irish and French.

Milo O’Shea gives a fine ‘Hebrew Lesson’ at The Irish Arts’ Centre

Who would believe it, a Hebrew lesson in an Irish theatre? But it is true, for on Thursday 23rd March at the Irish Arts Centre in New York City, a special function was held to honour veteran and renowned star of stage and screen, Irish actor Milo O’Shea, on occasion of his 80th birthday. Thespian O’Shea, a household name in Ireland, rose to prominence as a boy actor in Dublin and went on to play many roles on the Irish stage and screen during his long and distinguished career.

On the night I was able to share with our honourand, my fond early childhood memory of my late mother gathering us, as children, around her on the sofa in 1960s Belfast to watch Milo in Hugh Leonard’s television series Me Mammy. In addition to his nationwide fame in Ireland, Mr O’Shea has graced many stages in the West End of London and Broadway. Harold Pinter penned Night School for Milo on British television and his American television stints have included shows such as QB VII, Silent Song (Italia Award) and Peter Lundy and the Medicine Hat. Throughout his many years as an actor, Mr O’Shea has been nominated twice for Tony Awards – firstly for his performance in Staircase alongside Eli Walach, and, secondly, for his part in Mass Appeal (which, incidentally, landed him a Drama League Award and the Outer Critics’ Circle Award).

Back, however, to The Hebrew Lesson which was a short 30 minute film produced in 1972 by Wolf Mankowitz, a dramatist, journalist, novelist and screenwriter. Son of a Russian-Jewish bookseller in East London, it is hardly surprising that Mankowitz should concern himself with Hebrew in this work (which he originally wrote as a play). What is of immense interest to an Irish audience is that the film is based in Cork in the 1920s at the time of the Irish War of Independence. A young IRA man, being pursued by the English Black and Tans, stumbles into an attic which has been converted into a synagogue. As if this is not bizarre enough, the young man interrupts the senior Jewish resident during the latter’s self-taught Irish lessons as he was involved in selling his wares in the Gaeltacht area of rural West Cork.

It has to be said that the Mankowitz’s screenplay was nothing short of magnificent although we are happy to report that Mr O’Shea’s did justice to this finely-crafted screenplay with what was a virtuoso performance. This film, hardly surprisingly, won an award at The Cork Film Festival although it has sadly been neglected ever since then. This screening was a coup for the Irish Arts Centre, and we are deeply indebted to Georganne Heller (a theatre producer, board member and stalwart at the Irish Arts Centre) who uncovered the film in an archive during a recent visit to London. The Hebrew Lesson deserves a wider airing – and probably some subtitles, as there are lines in Irish and Hebrew at various junctures in the script.

The film, and the work of Milo O’Shea, were warmly introduced on the night by Mr Niall Burgess, the Irish Consul for New York. After the screening – and, of course, a richly deserved standing ovation - Mr O’Shea addressed the audience in a memorable and moving speech. Congratulations, Milo on a long and illustrious innings and many happy returns.

INTRODUCING Dan ÓNéill AKA ODD BODKINS

Dan has granted Soñar permission to publish his ODD BODKINS cartoon strip.

ODD BODKINS ON Soñar. Vol. 2 No. 2



Select Image for Larger Viewing


© Dan ONeill

Hugh Daniel O'Neill

Thirty years ago Hugh Daniel O’Neill was described as, “an innovator, a creator and a professional troublemaker” in a Forward to a collection of Odd Bodkins.

For seven years his Odd Bodkins cartoons ran daily in The San Francisco Chronicle and in 350 other newspapers throughout the world. At its peak, the strip had a readership of fifty million.
When he was hired at age 21 —the youngest cartoonist ever hired by a national syndicate— he was given three simple rules: no religion, no politics and no sex in the strip. He did his best to comply — he kept sex out of Odd Bodkins.
http://www.danoneillcomics.com/
http://origsix.com/index.asp

Saint Patrick in Manhattan – a reflection by Fulbright Professor Dr. Art Hughes

A Portrait of Art Hughes
by renowned artist Neil Shawcross

I am pleased to introduce Dr. Art Hughes in his first Guest Blog for Soñar.

Dr. Art Hughes, MA, MèsL, PhD is Senior Fulbright Irish Language Scholar for 2009/10. He is a Visiting Professor at Glucksman Ireland House, New York University. He is Director of Irish Language Programmes at the University of Ulster in Belfast. His doctoral thesis was study of the Gaelic dialect of the Bluestack Mountains, Co. Donegal. he is a prominent scholar in the field of Celtic linguistics and literature. He has written and/or edited 15 books (in English, Irish, French and Breton). He is also the Chair of The McCracken Cultural Society and founder of Ben Madigan Press. Recent publications include The Great Irish Verb Book and The Big Drum a translation of Seosamh Mac Grianna's novel An Druma Mór – he is currently preparing a film script for the same. He also has recently collaborated on an anthology of Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill in Irish and French.

Saint Patrick in Manhattan – a reflection by Fulbright Professor Dr. Art Hughes

He did not have a social security number and he worked on the black market. I am not speaking about Seán from Ireland, Maria from Mexico, Ricardo from Italy, Anna from the Ukraine or many of the other so-called ‘illegals’, making their home in modern New York, I am talking, rather, about St Patrick, the fifth century Briton who would later bring the Christian faith to Erin’s Isle.

Patrick was the son of a well-to-do government official of the Roman administration and dwelt somewhere in the west of Britain. Shortly after 400 AD we have a reference, in Irish Annals, to Niall of the Nine Hostages, a powerful Irish king, making a raid up the River Severn (which divides England from Wales). Such raids by Irish pirates on the British mainland were commonplace and it was on such a foray that a band of pirates kidnapped Patrick, a mere teenager, from his home and sold him as a slave in Ireland. His first job, in this ‘black market economy’, was tending to swine - and one source locates this first ‘job’ on Sliabh Mis (or Slemish) in County Antrim.

After some years, Patrick made good his escape to Britain, yet in a vision he dreamt of Ireland and wanted to bring the Christian faith to the country in which he had lived. Following his ordination he was granted permission by the Church to return to Ireland as a Christian missionary. The traditional date cited for his first mission is 432 AD.

Here, then, we have a young man who had spent years working illegally in Ireland getting to know the people and love the country. He later returns, with legal status, and makes one of the most significant contributions to Irish life anyone has ever made before, during or since.
What message, if any, can Patrick’s life and example have for us in Manhattan? I think there are several important ones. Firstly all economies need people from outside to help them sustain themselves and grow. Secondly, most workers, ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, make an honest contribution to society. They work hard, keep the law and want to feel a part of the set up. Any great civilization which enables its citizens to feel that they are stake holders is destined to flourish and succeed.

We cannot, of course, sum up St Patrick from a purely socio-economic perspective. He brought a message, that all men and women are equal and that we should treat our neighbors (irrespective of birth, country of origin, social status, color of skin or religious denomination) as our fellows and – as such – we should do unto them as we do unto ourselves. This model is at least worthy of an attempt to make it work.

St Patrick’s Day is a highly significant day for the Irish, but St Patrick’s message is not one merely for the Irish, it has much wider implications and ramifications. St Patrick’s life is a story of immigration and exile, of settling in a new country – and in that regard, it has significance for Manhattan. He, as a “Brit”, is an excellent reminder to the Irish of the dangers of xenophobia, or excluding the other.

If St Patrick were to walk among us today in Manhattan, how would he feel about thousands of hardworking people who yearn to be ‘legal’ and yet who are looking over their shoulders? What would he do for these people? Immigration was a real and a burning issue for St Patrick in his own time - it is also one which should be center-stage in our times. What are we doing about it? Perhaps, after all, Patrick’s life, work and example have something very real to offer the legislators and citizens of Manhattan.

To all creeds and classes, then, Happy St Patrick’s Day.

James Connolly The National Festival

© Joe ÓNéill

James Connolly

The National Festival

The Workers' Republic

March 18 1916

The question often arises: Why do Irishmen celebrate the festival of their national saint, in view of the recently re-discovered truth that he was by no means the first missionary to preach Christianity to the people of Ireland? It is known now beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Christian religion had been preached and practised in Ireland long before St. Patrick, that Christian churches had been established, and it is probable that the legend about the shamrock was invented in some later generation than that of the saint. Certainly the shamrock bears no place of any importance in early Celtic literature, and the first time we read of it as having any reference to or bearing on religion in Ireland occurs in the work of a foreigner – an English monk.

But all that notwithstanding there is good reason why Irish men and women should celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. They should celebrate it for the same reason as they should honour the green flag of Ireland, despite the fact that there is no historical proof that the Irish, in the days of Ireland’s freedom from foreign rule, ever had a green flag as a national standard, or indeed ever had a national flag at all.

The claim of the 17th of March to be Ireland’s national festival, the claim of St. Patrick to be Ireland’s national saint, the claim of the shamrock to be Ireland’s national plant, the claim of the green flag to be Ireland’s national flag rests not on the musty pages of half-forgotten history but on the affections and will of the Irish people.

Sentiment it may be. But the man or woman who scoffs at sentiment is a fool. We on this paper respect facts, and have a holy hatred of all movements and causes not built upon truth. But sentiment is often greater than facts, because it is an idealised expression of fact – a mind picture of truth as it is seen by the soul, unhampered by the grosser dirt of the world and the flesh.

The Irish people, denied comfort in the present, seek solace in the past of their country; the Irish mind, unable because of the serfdom or bondage of the Irish race to give body and material existence to its noblest thoughts, creates an emblem to typify that spiritual conception for which the Irish race laboured in vain. If that spiritual conception of religion, of freedom, of nationality exists or existed nowhere save in the Irish mind, it is nevertheless as much a great historical reality as if it were embodied in a statute book, or had a material existence vouched for by all the pages of history.

It is not the will of the majority which ultimately prevails; that which ultimately prevails is the ideal of the noblest of each generation. Happy indeed that race and generation in which the ideal of the noblest and the will of the majority unite.

In this hour of her trial Ireland cannot afford to sacrifice any one of the things the world has accepted as peculiarly Irish. She must hold to her highest thoughts, and cleave to her noblest sentiments. Her sons and daughters must hold life itself as of little value when weighed against the preservation of even the least important work of her separate individuality as a nation.

Therefore we honour St. Patrick’s Day (and its allied legend of the shamrock) because in it we see the spiritual conception of the separate identity of the Irish race – an ideal of unity in diversity, of diversity not conflicting with unity.

Magnificent must have been the intellect that conceived such a thought; great must have been the genius of the people that received such a conception and made it their own.

On this Festival then our prayer is: Honour to St. Patrick the Irish Apostle, and Freedom to his people.