A Year-end Message from Solas Nua—Celebrating Our 16th Year in 2021
Beannachtaí an tSéasúir agus Nollaig Shona Daoibh
Looking back on 2020, Solas Nua can celebrate another successful and innovative year. Thank you to our artists for your courage and creativity in a very difficult time, to our audiences for your engagement with us, to our generous friends and supporters who share and support our mission and passion and to our artistic and government partners for your commitment and encouragement.
We won our 2nd Helen Hayes Award, for Outstanding Performer in a Visiting Production—Pat Kinevane’s wonderful one-man show, Silent. The play, which was also nominated for outstanding visiting production, offered extraordinary insight into the inner world of a homeless man and we gave local homeless organizations free tickets to distribute. Last year, our production of The Frederick Douglass Project won for “Outstanding Ensemble in a Play.” The 2019 Solas Nua’s acclaimed production of The Smuggler was extended in a sold-out 2020 run at the Round House Theatre.
A new full-time Executive Director joined Solas Nua to help extend our success into the future. In 2020, Solas Nua hired its first full-time employee as it moved to execute its ambitious strategic plan.
Miranda Driscoll, a highly experienced Irish arts administrator and leader, was appointed Executive Director in November. Previously, Ms. Driscoll was Director/CEO of the Sirius Arts Centre in County Cork, Ireland, since October 2014. At Sirius, she served as senior arts manager, multidisciplinary cultural producer, venue programmer, curator and team leader. She developed a strong track record in fundraising, finance, innovative event production, creative partnerships and international, national and community-based initiatives, and is highly esteemed in the Irish arts community.
Solas Nua pivoted to turn its St. Patrick’s Day events into Cyber Craic, a two-week online festival of Irish arts, as the pandemic struck. Its signature Book Day distributed contemporary Irish literature by download on www.solasnua.org instead of handing it out at DC Metro stations on St. Patrick’s Day. Eleven books by contemporary Irish authors, including Hello, I am Alive, from Poetry Ireland; Female Lines, a collection by women writers in Northern Ireland; and and others could be downloaded directly during the entire festival.
The Cyber Craic Festival presented renowned Irish writers online. Authors like Jan Carson, whose Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature, and award-winning playwrights like Deirdre Kinahan and poets like Eiléan ní Chuilleanáin and Doireann ní Ghríofa, read from their work online. We posted several short films, including highlights from the Capital Irish Film Festival earlier in the month, and a selection of play readings from Dublin’s Fishamble Theatre’s Tiny Plays. Live music and dance performances were streamed from the Irish National Concert Hall and other venues, and we posted conversations with directors, actors, playwrights and other Irish artists.
The 2020 Capital Irish Film Festival (CIFF) was a huge success, with record pass sales, packed theatres, brilliant film-maker guests, enlightening discussions and amazing Irish films. It was our final in-person event of the year bringing capacity crowds into the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring in late February and early March.
Seamus Heaney and the Music of What Happens was voted the audience favorite film.
Solas Nua co-presented an exhibition of work by artist Brian Maguire at the American University Art Museum’s Katzen Arts Center. Without Borders was moved online in an impressive program featuring a film about the artist and his work. It tells the powerful story of Maguire’s contemporary paintings of war-torn places like Syria; refugee camps in the Middle East; and some of the hundreds of victims of gang-related violence on the U.S.-Mexico border. Solas Nua and the museum published a powerful exhibition catalog.
We also collaborated with AU on an online exhibition of Another Fine Mess by Shipsides & Beggs Projects, including Where the Line Ends, their new video artwork.
Solas Nua brought Dublin Voices to Washington.
In partnership with Georgetown University’s Global Irish Studies, the Embassy of Ireland and Politics & Prose, we presented an Author Reading Series, Dublin Voices. This was a series of stimulating and vibrant readings and discussions with authors such as Joseph O Connor, Roddy Doyle, Sinead Gleeson, Tara French, Colum McCann and Emma Dabiri.
Your support enables Solas Nua to bring award-winning, thought-provoking and vibrant contemporary Irish art to Washington metro audiences. Please continue to show your support for us in 2021 by donating to Solas Nua. Go raibh mile agaibh! Thank you on behalf of the many talented artists emerging in a diverse and changing 21st Century Ireland.
