Stephen Rea to be presented with John B. Keane Lifetime Achievement Award at Listowel Writers’ Week 2023
Stephen Rea will be presented with the John B. Keane Lifetime Achievement Award on the opening night of Listowel Writers’ Week, with a citation that will celebrate his contribution to Irish theatre.
Having worked with Nobel Prize winners Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter—playing Clov in Beckett’s Endgame in the Royal Court Theatre in 1976, with Beckett himself present in the rehearsals—Stephen Rea’s theatre credits places him among the most important actors of the last fifty years.
The citation and celebrations will have a particular focus on his work as a founding member of Field Day Theatre Company, along with Brian Friel. With 2023 being the 25th Anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and with responses to Brexit causing political impasses on the island, Stephen’s Field Day Theatre Company work is as relevant as ever.
Stephen Connolly, recently-appointed Festival Curator at Listowel Writers’ Week, said:
‘Working on the programme for Listowel Writers’ Week has been a dream come true. I have been buoyed by the enthusiastic welcome I have been given in the town and have been diligent in my research into the ethos upon which the festival was founded. It is remarkably similar to what I have been doing in Belfast over the last fifteen years.
To be able to be part of the process to honour Stephen Rea for his ground-breaking work in Irish theatre, and in particular the Field Day Theatre Company, has refreshed my commitment to the cause of Irish writing and its ability to open new ways of thinking about the world around us. His contribution to Irish culture and how we, as Irish people, are seen around the globe, cannot be overstated. I have spent time thinking of him as a young man being given performance notes for Endgame in the Royal Court Theatre in 1976 by Samuel Beckett himself; it’s a reminder of the importance that Irish writing plays in culture at large, and, frankly, it is humbling.
The first poet who will read on the first day of the festival, after the opening night, is William Keohane. He is a young writer from Limerick, and I cannot think of a better person to represent the vitality of new talent from Munster.
The festival was started to celebrate established talent while also encouraging new writers. I hope that I am doing justice to the lofty goals of John B. Keane, Bryan MacMahon, Danny Hannon and the founding members of Listowel Writers’ Week.’
Catherine Moylan, Chair of Writers’ Week, said:
‘We are delighted at the opportunity to celebrate Stephen Rea’s many achievements and acknowledge his generous contribution to the Arts; his role as an actor, patron and contributor to the Arts spans over six decades and we look forward to celebrating the John B.Keane Lifetime Achievement Award with him in Listowel this June.’
The following evening, Thursday the 1st of June, will see Stephen Rea lead a staged reading from The Translations of Seamus Heaney. This comprehensive landmark volume, the result of many years of scholarship by editor Marco Sonzogni, is published by Faber and Faber and includes works translated from Irish, Latin, Greek and many European languages. It includes The Cure at Troy, a translation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a play first directed by Stephen Rea for Field Day Theatre Company. It will also feature Seamus O’Hara, who played Manus in the recent National Theatre production of Brian Friel’s Translations, along with leading poets Victoria Kennefick, Ciara Ní É and Seán Hewitt.
Other festival highlights include a headline poetry reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Muldoon, who was recently appointed as the Professor of Poetry for Ireland, and an event featuring 2022 US National Book Award for Fiction winner Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch, and Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of The Latecomer and The Plot, in conversation with A Crooked Tree author Una Mannion. Paul Muldoon will be in conversation with Irish music icon Paul about his autobiography Crazy Dreams. Debut Belfast novelist Michael Magee and Acts of Desperation author Megan Nolan will be in conversation with Trespasses author Louise Kennedy. An event featuring the authors of Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women will take place in the town’s courthouse.
This year’s Writers’ Week will feature a galaxy of small-scale events in cafés, pubs, restaurants, to be outlined in a newsprint extended programme The Listowel Review, which will be a nod to the rich history of printing in the town.
A full schedule, including the closing night fiction headline writer, will be released in early Spring, and will include poetry workshops led by Rooney Prize-winning Stephen Sexton, Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Tess Taylor and fiction workshops with Wendy Erskine and Susannah Dickey.
Tickets will soon be on sale for some headline events at www.writersweek.ie.
