Irish Repertory Theatre (Charlotte Moore, Artistic Dir; Ciarán O’Reilly, Producing Dir) and Fishamble: The New Play Company (Jim Culleton, Artistic Dir; Eva Scanlan, Executive Dir) have announced the Transatlantic Residency, a follow-up to last year's Transatlantic Commissions Program. The program supported the creation of four short plays under the mentorship of playwright Dael Orlandersmith. The residency, supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, reunites Irish Rep and Fishamble with writers CN Smith, Felispeaks, Jade Jordan, and Kwaku Fortune as they expand their works into full-length plays, which will be presented as staged readings in New York in June 2024 and Dublin in July 2024. The writers have been working with dramaturgs Gavin Kostick and Nicola Murphy Dubey since February 2024 to expand on their plays ahead of the readings this summer, which will be directed by Jim Culleton and Dubey. The New York readings will take place at Irish Repertory (132 West 22nd St) on Mon June 17 and Tues June 18, 2024 at 7:00 PM. Additional readings will take place in Dublin at AXIS Theatre on Wed July 3 and Thursday July 4. The lineup is as follows; Mon June 17 "The Black Wolfe Tone" by Kwaku Fortune. The play is about muddled identity, and how trauma can be passed down from generation to generation. It’s about a culture of silence and raging against the machine. About the mind, and how young men deal, or don’t deal, with the darkness; "BENT!" by Felispeaks, a modern day Black Irish story of a young woman, Shayo, on the road to self-acceptance. Shayo battles whether to listen to the voice within herself or to listen to the trusted voices of her parents, we watch their struggle over the Christmas holidays. Tues June 18 "89" by Jade Jordan. "89" is a Dublin story inspired by the life of Christine Buckley, an Irish activist and campaigner, who served as the director of the Aislinn support and education group for survivors of Industrial Schools in Ireland; "Corktown" by CN Smith. "Corktown" is a story about Dublin, set outside Dublin; about the present, but set in the past. One night, in an all-white neighborhood in Corktown, Detroit, an Irish immigrant answers a knock at her door. The black woman on her doorstep insists she is due to move into the spare room upstairs. After a small struggle, she comes inside. Now what? The Transatlantic Commissions Program was founded in 2022 with the endeavor to address head-on the historical inequalities in representation that have existed in the theatrical canon. For tickets and more information visit irishrep.org. Press contact: Print Shop PR (212/756-1248)...