Norman Huston and Loretta Brennan Glucksman.
PHOTOS BY ORLA O'SULLIVAN
By Orla O'Sullivan
The Origin Theatre Company celebrated 15 years of bringing new European playwrights to the U.S. at its annual gala last week, as well as the decade since Origin’s 1st Irish annual festival was launched.
With Origin so established, its founder and artistic director George Heslin clearly has an eye on its legacy, mentioning to the Echo at the end of the gala, which had a little more stress on fundraising than past ones, “The next thing is to get a base.”
The evening featured a live auction, with Patrick Tully, president of the American Ireland Fund, playing the part of auctioneer like a pro. Meanwhile, video screens around the room showed the funds raised, minute by minute, as bids and raffle-ticket sales came in.
Limerick native and Trinity graduate Heslin reviewed his start in New York, from acting classes with the great Uta Hagen to founding Origin. The latter necessitated learning how to get not-for-profit status, set up a board, raise funds and so on.
“You need to set up a mentorship program because artists don’t know how to go through this whole corporate connections thing,” Heslin said, apparently addressing his comments to the host, Tom Moran. As in past years, the former chairman of Mutual of America was present for the party on a top floor of the Fortune 500 company’s Park Avenue headquarters.
Moran chipped in when Tully pressed attendees during a frenetic auction that included a guitar signed by the members of U2.
The spirited Tully started high, looking for an opening $15,000 contribution. Silence. “$10k?” he called, amid rapid-fire delivery. Pacing, he acquiesced, “Okay, there’s another way he can do this, two fives?”
Moran readily agreed, quickly followed by Loretta Brennan Glucksman with another $5,000 contribution.
Brennan Glucksman later introduced one of the evening’s two honorees, Norman Houston, director of the Northern Ireland Bureau in Washington, D.C.
Houston was America’s most senior diplomat from the North at a time when the situation there was “damn scary,” Glucksman said, adding that Houston’s instrumental role in peace included introducing to the White House leaders from both sides of the political divide, among them “our beloved Martin McGuinness.”
Video tributes came from afar, including L.A., where Ross King reports for ITV Breakfast shows about Hollywood (“not the one in Northern Ireland,” he clarified, referring to Rory McIlroy’s home town). Ross quipped that Houston is “proof that leprechauns do exist.”
Orlagh Cassidy.
Antrim native Houston was quick to make fun of his signature style, noting, “Real men in Larne do not wear bow ties.”
Ties of another kind were emphasized by actor Orlagh Cassidy, the evening’s other honoree. Having just met Houston, she said their encounter exemplified how “George [Heslin] is a great connector.” It transpired that a friend of Norman’s had hosted “the afters” of Cassidy’s mother’s funeral, when the teacher from Dublin died.
Cassidy said when she last acted with Heslin, at the Irish Rep many years ago, “George was always collecting business cards, making phone calls. I used to wonder ‘What is this Origin theatre? Where is it?’”
Heslin is working on that.
