Mission Statement 2008

Now in its 15th year, the Irish Theatre Arts Center has made major strides in expanding the level of creative work being done under its now international banner across the USA and Europe. We continue to do this by co-producing and sponsoring stage, music, and film projects dealing with the Irish experience.

Since 1993, ITAC has traveled to Ireland, France, Spain, England, Germany, New Zealand, and Canada, as well as, the US cities of Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.

The Center co-produced or sponsored over 300 evenings of musicals, concerts, and staged readings, along with full productions of new and classic works, and special projects of poetry readings and "evenings with authors" such as Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Angela's Ashes and Sebastian Barry, Playwright of The Steward of Christendom, Martin McDonagh, and Conor McPherson. This year will see us continuing to focus on our touring international exchange programs.

Over the past years, the center has played host to such groups as Yale School of Drama, the Classical Theatre Lab, the Playwrights' Group, the Actor's Gym and the Lincoln Center's Directors Lab West. Currently, we are home to the William Butler Yeats Society and the James Joyce Society, co-sponsoring over 24 events a year, as well as continuing our relationship with NYU's Ireland House and the Wild Geese Organization in Connecticut.

In 2000, the center participated in setting up the West Coast version of the Lincoln Center Theater's Directors Lab. In 2001 we were based at Trinity College Dublin. In 2002 we were at Harvard University, in 2003 at the American Academy in Rome, in 2004 in the Irish Cultural Center in Paris. Our production of the Clockwork Orange last fall was a great success, gaining us a residence at the University of Toronto. This year we're planning a return tour of England and Ireland.

It is our intention in 2005, to continue expanding into the other Irish art forms. Co-sponsoring art shows, photographic exhibits, dance and musical events and screening the films of Irish and Irish-American filmmakers will all become part of the Center's co-producing activities.

We will continue our relationship with such prestigious universities as Yale, NYU, Loyola Marymount, UCLA, University of Toronto, McGill University in Montreal, and Trinity College of Dublin.

The Center is exploring the possibilities of exchange programs with other English speaking theaters in Vienna, Paris and Frankfurt.

We feel that the most positive and powerful export of Ireland is its music, literature and theatre arts, and we here at the Center intend to serve as a conduit in bringing those arts forms to an international audience, as well as providing a forum for other international groups here in America as well as Ireland.

We would like to especially thank Gabriel Byrne, Jim Sheridan, Charles Durning, Frank Gilroy, Frank McCourt and Martin Sheen for the wonderful evenings they gave us.

We would also like to thank Governor Schwarzenegger, Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Dianne Feinstein, former President Bill Clinton, former Governor Gray Davis for their proclamation awards over the past years, as well as, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.

For further info on ITAC website please visit our website www.robertginty.com or you can write us at:

Irish Theatre Arts Center
20 Upper Merrion Street
Dublin 2, Ireland