Vice President Biden and Taoiseach Enda Kenny at Tuesday’s Ireland 100 opening gala. Photo by Marty Katz.
By Irish Echo Staff
Three weeks of the best of Irish artistic endeavor got underway Tuesday evening in the nation’s capital with the gala opening of the Kennedy Center’s “Ireland 100” festival.
The opening was attended by a host of dignitaries led by Vice President Joe Biden and Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
In his remarks to the gala audience, Mr. Kenny promised “three weeks of the very best of our arts and culture.”
Said Mr. Kenny in part: “The next three weeks at the Kennedy Center are not about entertainment per se.
“Rather, Ireland 100 gives audiences the chance to consider Ireland in its complexity, in a strangeness that is inherent.
“Increasingly, we live in a world of spectacle, one of instant reaction where our response is published to the world before we have time to absorb never mind reflect.
“I believe the arts, particularly the Irish arts with their exquisite moments, have the capacity to bring us back inside ourselves.
“Back into the dark where we can feel anguish grief joy.
“Where we can regain that sense of self, the self that maybe through the roles we are forced to assume in life, to which we have become a stranger.
“I believe it would be impossible to listen to Colm Toibin or Colum McCann, or Ann Enright or Eavan Boland, and not make that journey inward that difficult and sometimes disturbing trip 'home.’
“Tonight we have with us a man who is an eminent Irish American and who in just a few weeks will be coming ‘home’ to Ireland.
“Vice President Joe Biden, you honor us with your presence tonight and we look forward to having you with us in Ireland (the vice president will be visiting Ireland in the near future).
“This evening then, I thank and warmly want to thank Helen Henderson, David and Alice Rubenstein and the many sponsors. I thank, too, Deborah Rutter and her team here at the center.
“And of course I say a special thanks to all at our home-from-home at the Irish Embassy under Ambassador Anderson.
“The staff have worked so hard on this project for the last two years and I am delighted that it has come together so well.
“Especially tonight, I want to thank Fiona Shaw, one of Ireland’s most distinguished actors and directors. Fiona Shaw will direct tonight’s performance and will also serve as the festival’s artist in residence.
“This, as you know, is the centerpiece of our celebrations in the U.S. to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising 1916.
“It is appropriate that our global program to commemorate this centenary should focus on America since our Proclamation drew so deeply on your Declaration. The Proclamation cites ‘our exiled children in America.’
“Those same children, being the grandparents and great grandparents of many here tonight, including the Kennedy family itself.
“Five of the seven signatories of the Proclamation had spent periods of time - considerable periods in some cases - here in the United States. It is an honor to be here as America commemorates their sacrifice and celebrates the freedom and story of Ireland over the last hundred years. We are commemorating not just their sacrifice for Irish freedom, but the story of Ireland over the past one hundred years.
“A month before he died, President Kennedy went to Amherst College, to receive an honorary degree and to honor Robert Frost, who had honored him by reciting at his inauguration.
“President Kennedy told his audience: ‘I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the artist.’
“When it comes to Ireland, I agree. Our gala tonight features some of the very best of those artists.”
