Actor’s Aras performance for President and Mrs Higgins

Dunshaughlin actor Robert Harrington performed as WB Yeats in a one-man production at Aras an Uachtarán last week for President Michael D and Sabina Higgins wedding anniversary.

Robert is part of the Dublin-based Smashing Times International Centre for Arts and Equality, which presented a programme of artistic performances on Friday in the Hyde Room at Áras an Uachtaráin. The show is a bespoke combination of three dramatic monologue performances interlinked with music and chat.

The award-winning work of Smashing Times has been acclaimed for its extraordinary story-telling inspired by historical memory and stories of citizens and artists from across the ages. Enjoy a gathering of performance, music and song presenting re-imagined moments from the lives of citizens and artists caught up in extraordinary times, showcasing stories of Irish people from the 20th century.

The first performance was 'Grace and Joe' written and directed by Mary Moynihan, inspired by Grace Evelyn Gifford (1888-1955) and the story of her time with Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the leaders executed after the 1916 Easter Rising. Next was Robert in 'Tales From an Afterworld' by Féilim James, based on the life and work of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).

The show culminated with 'At Summer’s End' by Féilim James, a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a Jewish-Irish citizen murdered in the Holocaust. Her name was Ettie Steinberg (1914-42). We learn how at a young age her family left Eastern Europe for Dublin, before love led her away to the European mainland. This by turns tender and harrowing portrait of love, loss, and the brutality of war tells one ordinary woman’s extraordinary, and often forgotten, story. Music was performed by Lisa McLoughlin-Gnemmi.

Sabina Higgins, a former actor, is a patron of Smashing Times, and Robert said it was a great honour to perform for the President and Mrs Higgins.