Rea tries out the teaching game

Actor Stephen Rea, who recently received critical acclaim in New York and London stagings of Sam Shepard’s monologue Kicking a Dead Horse, is coming to Queens College (QC) this month.
The Belfast-born actor, an Oscar nominee for his performance in The Crying Game, will visit classes and rehearsals in conjunction with the college production of J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.
He will also attend the play’s opening night on Thursday, October 16, in the 476-seat Goldstein Theater on the QC campus, and field questions from the audience after the final curtain.
The run of eight performances will be on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, October 16, 17, 18, 23, 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoons October 19 and 26 at 3 p.m.
The first Irish drama enacted at Queens College in decades, the production is the culmination of an innovative effort between QC’s Irish Studies program and Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance.
This summer, 16 City University students, most of them Queens College drama majors, attended the National University of Ireland at Galway for a Study Abroad course.
Focused on Playboy and contemporary work, their studies enabled them to absorb Irish culture at its source and develop a deeper understanding of the texts.
Rea is an apt choice as coach - He played the title role in the Synge work earlier in his career, to great acclaim.
The Irish actor has appeared on British TV since 1964, and has played such
divergent roles as a Russian detective tracking a mass-child-murderer in the fact-based HBO drama “Citizen X” and Cardinal Richelieu in a 2001 remake of the Dumas swashbuckler, “The Musketeer.”
Rea agreed to be interviewed by Professor Kevin Whalen of Notre Dame University Dublin, after the opening night performance, as well as take questions. “I’m very susceptible to being asked to do things,” said Rea, who considers Synge’s dark comedy “the greatest Irish play we have in the English language.”
First performed in 1907, the play caused riots during its opening week at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. The play follows Christy Mahon, a young man on the run who claims to have killed his father, as it explores the mores of Irish village life.
Professor Clare Carroll, director of the Queens College Irish Studies program said the students “have the unprecedented opportunity to work one on one with Stephen Rea, one of the great Christy Mahons of all times.”
Tickets are $14, or $12 to seniors and QC students, faculty, and staff. They may be purchased on line at https://kupferbergcenter.org/playboy.htm or by calling the Box Office at 718-793-8080.
Box Office hours are: Monday and Friday from noon to 6 p.m.; Wednesday from noon to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tickets are also on sale at the door one hour prior to performance.
An Irish Theatre Conference will also take place following the Sunday matinee on October 19. Moderated by Clare Carroll, the distinguished panel will include Charlotte Moore, Artistic Director of the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City; Professor Nessa Cronin of the National University of Galway; Stephen Gabis, noted theatrical dialect coach and Professor Lucy McDiarmid, who holds the Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Chair in English at Montclair State University.