Director Reclaims His Gaelic Name and Sets Sights on Cultural Expression

First of all, there is the matter of the name: Brian o h-Eachtuigheirn (pronounced BREE-an Oh-hock-TAY-hay-ran). “In Gaelic-speaking areas, I would always be referred to by my Gaelic name,” explained the Dublin-born artistic director of Hollywood’s Celtic Arts Center An Claidheamh Soluis. “Later, when I went to high school and university, I got more and more into the Anglo-Irish world--and gradually it became Brian Herron.”

But with his founding of New York’s Celtic Arts Center--and this local branch in 1985--the actor-director, 50, has gradually reclaimed his Gaelic name. “I’ve come to realize I have to take a stand,” he said. “Also, it reflects the development of the center. More and more people studying Gaelic, Monday nights now we have Irish, Scottish and Welsh classes--and music and dance. So as we get more of an identity of ourselves, I’m reflecting that.”

This weekend, his production of Sean O’Casey’s “The Shadow of a Gunman” opens at Hollywood’s 267-seat Ivar Theatre, a reprise of last season’s staging at Celtic Arts. It is the first time the center has mounted any of its works on an outside stage, prompted by the enormous critical and public response to the show’s original run--and the fact that another play (Jean Genet’s “The Blacks”) was already booked into the center for this time slot.

“Shadow” is set during Ireland’s War of Independence (1918-21). “There was a guerrilla war; the Irish people were beginning to shake their allegiance from the British authority to their own civilian courts,” said the director, who originally appeared in a production of “Shadow” 25 years ago. This time he’s playing the central role of Seumas (pronounced Shamus) Shields, a peddler who shares his flat with a poet.

“I’ve tried to stage it as if there were two sides of O’Casey himself,” he said of his character, “struggling with the events that have taken place: Should he get involved? Should he not get involved? Then he meets a young girl who, the way I’m approaching it, represents the idealism and future and beauty of Ireland. So to impress her, he tries to start living out his life as a gunman.”

Although o h-Eachtuigheirn had long dreamed of staging “Shadow” (he’d love to do a trilogy of O’Casey’s work), the actual decision came about quite hastily. Last fall, after a summer’s vacation in Ireland, he returned to Celtic Arts to find the organization nearly broke, its then-artistic director, Sean Walsh, badly in need of a rest. “We had to get on a play immediately,” he said flatly. “When I got back, we had essentially two weeks. We put the play up in 12 days.”

The move to the Ivar (a former burlesque house that is hurriedly being remodeled for this opening) came about largely through Celtic Arts’ association with its new owner, the Inner City Cultural Center.

“It’s always been part of our policy to communicate through art with people of different ethnic backgrounds,” o h-Eachtuigheirn said. “We’ve done it to give ourselves a sense of perspective. We can’t be talking about ourselves and not relate to other people in the same place, the same space.” The relationship with Inner City was strengthened last year when Celtic Arts established a memorial scholarship in the name of a black actor who’d been appearing in a show at the theater when he was killed in a traffic accident.

O h-Eachtuigheirn’s commitment to the black community is also reflected in Celtic Arts’ current production of “The Blacks.” “We were moving into Black History Month,” he said. “I sort of feel about Black History Month the way I do about St. Patrick’s Day, like ‘This is your little spot.’ So I argued at the beginning of this season that we should establish a show as part of our regular season--and not part of that month.” (As a result, the show opened in January and will run into March.)

“Blacks” director Barbara Mealy describes the work as “a play within a play within a play, a satire on the stereotypes of blacks. All of the actors are black, but half of them are in white masks, watching. They’re doing it very big, very grandiose--so you can see the ridiculousness of the stereotypes.”

O h-Eachtuigheirn makes no apologies for the non-Celtic detour.

“We’ll do plays by anybody as long as we can bring them to bear on the question of what’s happening to national identity, cultural identity,” argued the director, who recently leased the restaurant next door to Celtic Arts--now dubbed Cafe Beckett--that’s already popular as a hangout for soup, stew and theatrical readings. “Plays like ‘The Blacks’ allow us to look through other eyes at the sort of things we’ve been grappling with in terms of our own Anglicization.”

The director fell in love with theater at an early age. “I used to put on plays for the local kids; people would bring a penny or a jam jar, and we’d put on a show,” he recalled. His father was involved in theater and music; his mother took him “to all kinds of demonstrations, celebrations and graveside commemorations. So my orientation was never toward meetings and serious stuff, but rather towards celebrations in the streets.”

After a scholarship to Trinity College and a stint working with English fishermen, o h-Eachtuigheirn’s activism began to surface: lobbying for higher pay for the fishermen, boycotting South Africa, advocating peace in Vietnam. Arriving in the United States in 1964, he became involved in the civil rights movement; his artistic influences were the politically progressive Bread and Puppet Theatre and Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino.

It was during that time that o h-Eachtuigheirn became aware of how little Irish-American identity was being reflected in the arts.

“The majority of people of Irish descent had gone away from the culture,” he said, sighing. “I learned through my involvement with places like Teatro Campesino the importance of this kind of cultural expression--and realized it was lacking in our own people. So I started the center in New York; then I came here to start this branch. In June I’m going to leave here and go to another place. I’m going to keep doing this till all of our people know who they are.”

“The Shadow of a Gunman” plays Tuesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m., at the Ivar Theatre, 1605 N. Ivar Ave., Hollywood, to Feb. 17. Tickets are $20. “The Blacks” plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. at the Celtic Arts Center, 5651 Hollywood Blvd., to March 2. Tickets are $10. Reservations for both: (213) 462-6844.