The Irish American Writers & Artists’ successful Salon series returned to the Cell Theatre on Tuesday night of last week. One of the evening’s highlights was Billy Barrett’s reading from his memoir in progress “Highway Star.” Billy carries himself with the bravado of a newly-crowned prince in urban street confessionals. Vivid, poignant and gritty or maybe he’s just decided to get his life off his chest. “Fat and forty ain’t that bad,” he said with a smile.
Tom Mahon’s video, a beautifully photographed journey, “Hanoi’s Most Dangerous People,” which is effectively accompanied by Tom Waits’s “Tom Traubert’s Blues,” was another hit with the audience. Waits’s tune, which incorporates lyrics from Eric Bogle’s “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” an antiwar derivative of “Waltzing Matilda,” an Australian bush song, served as the backdrop for Mahon’s cathartic journey back to Vietnam where he served as a soldier during the Vietnam War.
First-time reader Kate McLeod read a personal essay, “What the Sock Drawer Says.” McLeod’s piece included a wonderful impersonation of Martha Stewart on how to organize a sock drawer and some insights into an extraterrestrial conspiracy: the possibility that losing socks in the rinse cycle of washing machines around the world may be an alien phenomenon.
Pat Fenton, along with the wonderfully expressive and talented actor Jack O’Connell, read from his play “Stoopdreamer and Other Brooklyn Stories.” Fenton’s work tells of the characters who lived in the Irish working-class enclave of Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn before Robert Moses drove the Prospect Expressway through the very heart of it in 1953, and divided it forever. Pat recently added the words “Brooklyn Stories” to his title, since, as he said, “The arts in Brooklyn are pretty hot now, and that new title has more universal appeal.”
And in the future: Fresh off her great success in the Irish Rep’s Dancing at Lughnasa, Aedin Moloney has reported that she’ll be reading “Molly” at an upcoming Salon…Ireland’s 2010 Patrick Kavanagh Award winner Connie Roberts was in the audience. Connie said she’s looking forward to presenting at the Cell on April 17… T.J. Englsh, the IAW&A president, will also be in attendance on April 17. He will be reading from his best seller, now out in paperback, “Savage City.”
Upcoming Irish American Writers and Artists’ salons are at the Thalia Café at 95th Street and Broadway on next Tuesday, April 3, and the Cell located at 338 W. 23rd Street, on April 17. The starting time for both is 7 p.m.
For more information about the salons or the Irish American Writers & Artists http://i-am-wa.org/ contact Charles R. Hale at chashale1@yahoo.com.
