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By Mark Williams
In the midst of the Celtic Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, W.B. Yeats implored his Irish literary compatriots to “go where Homer went.” It was an audacious urging, to formalize a relationship between Ireland’s mythological pantheon and the classical gods of ancient continental Europe, to write into existence as rich a cultural and literary heritage as the Greco-Roman deities held in the popular canonic imagination. The task, taken on by Yeats, as well as writers like George Russell, Austin Clarke, and Lady Gregory, was somewhat complicated by the fact that until the century prior, the mere intellectual concept of a native pantheon of Irish gods was unavailable to Irish writers, having largely been abandoned by the late middle ages. Moreover, writes Mark Williams in his excellent new book on the subject of Irish gods, they are notorious shape shifters.
Father Shay Cullen with some of the Preda School children. By Olivia O’Mahony, Editorial Assistant
Father Shay Cullen, a Dublin-born Columban Missionary based in the Philippines since 1969, has been given the 2016 Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award.
Cullen (pictured above with his students) has worked tirelessly over a lifetime to promote human rights, justice, and peace, with a particular drive towards ending child exploitation and abuse of children in the Philippines. In 1974, Cullen set up the PREDA Foundation to help child victims and trafficked women who were being exploited in the sex trade.
The award was set up to honor the life of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish prelate who, based in the Vatican from 1938 until 1960, saved over 6,500 lives from the Nazi forces in Rome during WWII. ♦
Ireland s Top Goal Scorer Retires Internationally irishamerica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishamerica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Olivia O’Mahony, Editorial Assistant
Community theater groups from throughout the United States and Canada converged at the Geva Theater Center in Rochester, New York for the 24th Annual Acting Irish International Theater Festival in April. The adjudicated festival, founded in 1993, consisted this year of seven full-length productions presented over five days, all of which were attended by Oleans-based theater adjudicator and former president of the Theater Association of New York State Paul Nelson, who reviewed each play and its links to the traditions of Irish drama.
As the host organization, the Irish Players of Rochester drama group opened the festival with a production of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which centers around the principal character’s upcoming migration to the U.S. from the fictional town of Ballybeg, County Donegal. The winners of the 2016 Milwaukee event’s “Best Production” category, the Liffey Players Drama Society of Calgary, brough