Celtic Arts Center Fights for Its Place in L.A. Sun

Welcome to a little bit of Ireland in Los Angeles.

At a small building at 5651 Hollywood Blvd. sits the Celtic Arts Center (An Claidheamh Soluis ), a 4-year-old organization dedicated to the preservation of Celtic arts and culture. For theatergoers, “A Flag to Fly,” Chris Matthews’ drama on Irish-American soldiers in the Mexican-American War, plays Thursdays through Sundays. On Monday evenings, there’s free Celtic folk dancing and music. Tuesdays and Sundays, there are free Gaelic classes.

“There are 2 million people of Irish descent in Southern California--and no full-scale cultural center,” said Sean Fallon Walsh, who heads the center. “We came in, opened our doors and said, ‘OK, it’s not much, but here it is.’ Now if we could get the community behind us, get people to say, ‘Hey, we deserve a real cultural center’--with classrooms for language, history, music, dance, theater, literature and art, a small theater and maybe a larger auditorium . . . .”

Walsh points to the Japanese cultural center downtown, “a beautiful multimillion-dollar building. But we’ve had a problem applying for grants. Because we’re white, there’s a tendency to say, ‘Well, you’re not really a minority.’ Actually it is a culture that’s in danger of extinction--just like the Native Americans, who were also forced out of their land. If this culture is not preserved in some way, it’s going to disappear.”

The actor, who says he’s “fiftyish,” admits that he didn’t always have such strong feelings on the subject. Growing up in Ohio, “I was a typical St. Patrick’s Day wear-your-green-stuff Irish-American kid,” he recalled. “My mother’s from Ireland, and my father’s people are Irish. I went to Catholic schools; my mother taught me some Gaelic; I’d sing songs at their parties. A few times I’d see this strange dancing, but I didn’t really pay any attention to it.”

It wasn’t till a 1984 family trip to Ireland that Walsh made an emotional connection to his roots.

“I felt like I’d come home,” he said simply. “It just felt so right . Of course, before that, I’d always been fiercely proud to be Irish. I was concerned about the state of Ireland, what was happening with the war there--but not radicalized to the point of wanting to be part of a cultural venture.

“But when I got back, I was living in Hollywood, recently divorced, and I read an interview with Brian Heron, who’d founded the Irish Arts Center in New York, had now come out here and was looking for actors.”

Cast in the center’s inaugural production, it wasn’t till the second project, “The Famine” that Walsh really went gung-ho. “We did all this research on what really happened in the potato famine,” he said darkly. “Yes, the crop failed, but there was plenty of food around. It was all being shipped to England, and these people were just being allowed to starve. Most of them left the country or died of starvation. I was really shocked at not being aware of this history.”

When Heron left after the first year, Walsh was elected to succeed him. His official title is stiurthoir --meaning steerman, or steerer of the boat. Yet he makes it clear this is not a one-man shop. The membership organization has a policy committee of eight members, who are required to study Gaelic and to take an artistic and economic responsibility for the center. “So if the rent’s due and there’s not enough revenue,” Walsh said, “we reach into our own pockets.”

In the meantime, he dreams of a higher-profile future--a concept he ties to the center’s acquiring its own building. “The Odyssey Theatre got their building from the city for a dollar a year,” he pointed out. “The Irish Arts Center in New York got a building from the city for $50 a month--where it costs us about two grand a month just to keep our doors open. So we’ve had some conversations with the mayor’s office, been in contact with Councilman Woo, the Committee on Redevelopment, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce . . . .”

When he finally gets that building, Walsh says, “Then we can ask the Ed McMahons and the Carroll O’Connors and the Merv Griffins, ‘Will you help us now?’ I think there’s been a definite holding back on the part of the community--maybe because we’re small, or where we’re located. Some people don’t feel comfortable bringing their kids into that area. So that’s tough. But there’s another reason for the holding back: A lot of people just don’t want to be reminded of where they came from.”

The ethnicity embarrasses them? Walsh shook his head. “I think so,” he said reluctantly. “Although some of them are very proud of their poor upbringing--’When I was a kid, I had it really tough’--a lot of them don’t like the image. You know, when the Irish came here, there was tremendous discrimination. Now many of them are very wealthy and powerful; they want to be considered the elite of society. They don’t want to remember what brought them here--the holocaust, if you will, of the 1840s.”

“A Flag to Fly” (which opened to rave reviews last summer at the center and was revived earlier this month with its cast almost intact) is based on a true story that took place in 1847. The subject is seven Irish-American soldiers drafted to fight in the Mexican War who desert and ultimately take up arms with the Mexicans. Caught and convicted, the soldiers are forced to stand on the gallows--nooses around their necks--until the triumphant U.S. battle flag is raised.

Although the center’s plays are either by or about Gaelic-Celtic peoples, Walsh is happy to report that “Flag” strikes a universal chord.

“The Latino community has been very responsive, because these ‘San Patricios’ are considered heroes in Mexico,” he explained. “There’s a plaque in Mexico with the names of the troops of every nationality that deserted. It’s just that the Irish were crazy enough to form a battalion and fight against the Americans. Even Abraham Lincoln called it an unjust war; a lot of people were up in arms about it. So the story itself is not particularly Irish--and I’m happy it isn’t.”

Nevertheless, Walsh has strong hopes to tap into what he considers a huge Irish-American audience.

“There are some 40 million people of Irish descent in America today,” he said. “That’s an enormous number.” All they need, he believes, is a little nudge. At the Monday-night jams at the center (where instruments include harps, fiddles, drums, Irish pipes, pen whistles, flutes and banjos), “people hear the music, see the dancing, and it’s very exciting. There’s a real thirst--almost a genetic thirst--for people to learn about their roots, their culture.”

Celtic New Year (Samhain) will be celebrated at the center from noon to 6 p.m. today, with an evening program beginning at 7. The afternoon event offers food, games, poetry and songs--plus instruction in music and dance and Gaelic calligraphy; the later show is a traditional Celtic concert with ghost stories. Adult admission for each program is $5, children 12 to 18, $2; children under 12, free. For information: (213) 462-6844.