For Immediate Release: January 23, 2006
Media Contact: Sue Winge, Villanova Theatre, 610.519.7454

Villanova Theatre is pleased to present the Philadelphia Premiere of Prayers of Sherkin, written by internationally-acclaimed poet, novelist, and playwright Sebastian Barry and directed by James J. Christy, a Barrymore Award-winning director and professor of theatre at Villanova University.

Prayers of Sherkin runs February 7–19, 2006, at Vasey Hall on the Villanova University campus. Show times are 8:00pm Tuesday–Friday, 2:00pm and 8:00pm Saturday, and 2:00pm Sunday. Tickets are $18–$22, with discounts for seniors, students, and groups, and may be ordered by calling the Villanova Theatre Box Office at (610) 519-7474. Additional information is available at www.theatre.villanova.edu.

Prayers of Sherkin is a haunting play about a Shaker-like community living in isolation on a remote island off the coast of Southern Ireland. A young woman from the island falls in love with a charming lithographer from Cork and must choose between her traditional life on Sherkin Island or a new life – and marriage – on the mainland. The 1990 play is based, in part, on Barry’s own family history and the life of his great-grandmother, Fanny Hawke.

“My father and sister went to a funeral of an aunt in Cork and when they came back my sister said that my father had made her promise not to tell me what they had heard there, that my great-grandmother was a woman called Fanny Hawke and lived on Sherkin Island as part of a Protestant sect,” Barry said.

“So, of course, my sister told me – which is the purpose of a secret – and I wrote a poem to Fanny called Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever,” he continued. “I realized that if she hadn’t existed, none of us would have either. So [the poem] was a kind of a late thank you, an acknowledgement of her courage.”

Later, Barry transformed his poem about Fanny Hawke into the play Prayers of Sherkin.

“I had written a play called Boss Grady’s Boys and realized it was a kind of hidden portrait of my brother and myself and that got me thinking,” he recalled. “It was a burning fact that my beloved grandfather, a fervent nationalist and Catholic, had never mentioned his mother to me. That prompted me to try and uncover her story or, rather, invent a story about her that would stand in for her vanished story. Having called her up with the poem, she wasn’t about to go away – quiet and unobtrusive though she was – so I set about trying to find her in the larger world of a play.”

That world includes the Hawke family, descendents of a visionary religious man from Manchester, England, named Matt Purdy, as well as an assortment of colorful local characters, including a boatsman who ferries the Hawke’s back and forth from Sherkin Island to the mainland, a shopkeeper and her husband, a fisherman, a beggar woman, and Patrick Kerwin, the lithographer. There are a half-dozen dialects utilized in Prayers of Sherkin, reflecting the various regions of Ireland and England that the characters come from; the language is complex and the dialogue poetic.

“Barry comes from the great tradition of Irish poetic drama where the language expresses the inner life and awareness of the characters,” said director Christy. “In the manner of Shakespeare, the imagery that Barry’s characters speak broadens the individual situation that the character is in and makes it more universal. For example, when Fanny is praying before going to sleep, she prays for the peace of the Amazon and the Ganges and the Shannon. It gives a world awareness to this very local play.”

Christy feels one of Barry’s significant concerns is what Christy terms “respective differences.”

“In the play, the members of this isolated religious community have deep respect and tolerance for their very different neighbors, including a Presbyterian shopkeeper and Irish Catholic nuns – and the feelings are mutual,” Christy said. “Prayers of Sherkin is almost a portrait of a utopian community. Some have seen the play and perceived it as a hopeful prayer for religious and social tolerance in Ireland.”

Barry was born on July 5, 1955, in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. His academic posts include the Charles A. Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University this semester; Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin (1995-1996); and Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1984). His plays include The Pentagonal Dream (1986), Boss Grady's Boys (1988), Prayers of Sherkin (1990), White Woman Street (1992), The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (1995), Our Lady of Sligo (1998), Hinterland (2002), Fred and Jane (2002), and Whistling Psyche (2004). His 1995 play, The Steward of Christendom, received numerous awards, including the Ireland/America Literary Prize, London Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play, and Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe Play. Barry’s novels include The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998), Annie Dunne (2002), and A Long Long Way (2005), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. Barry lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Director Christy has been a professor and director with Villanova’s theatre department for 39 years. Recent directing credits at Villanova include Our Town, Twelfth Night, Don Juan, The Trojan Women, and The Passion of Christ. Last spring he directed Take Me Out at Philadelphia Theatre Company; it received six Barrymore Award nominations, including Christy's seventh for Outstanding Direction, and won the award for Outstanding Production of the year. In 2004, Christy directed a new play, Never Tell written by his son, Jimmy, for the New York International Fringe Festival. In recognition of his long and distinguished career as a theatre artist and educator, Christy received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia at its Barrymore Awards ceremony in October 2005. Prayers of Sherkin will be Christy’s last of over 50 productions as a full-time faculty member at Villanova.

The cast of Prayers of Sherkin features a mix of graduate theatre students and guest artists, including graduate student Marcie Thurstlic as Fanny Hawke; James F. Schlatter, director of the theatre arts program at the University of Pennsylvania, as her father John Hawke; Villanova theatre professor Joanna Rotté as Aunt Hannah Hawke; graduate student Taylor Williams as Aunt Sarah Purdy; and Villanova freshman Matthew Mykityshyn as Fanny’s brother Jesse Hawke. Villanova graduate Jared Michael Delaney portrays the lithographer Patrick Kirwin and Villanova graduate Stephen Patrick Smith appears as the founder of the Sherkin sect, Matt Purdy. Philadelphia-based actor/director Michael P. Toner portrays the boatsman Mr. Moore; Villanova junior Shaun Malleck is the fisherman Eoghan O’Drisceoil; graduate student Kristi A. Good is the shopkeeper Meg Pearse; graduate student Jonathon Reardon is her husband Stephen Pearse; and graduate student Grace Armstrong is the Singer, an impoverished woman.

The production team is comprised of scenic designer Nick Embree, costume designer Susan Schaeffer, lighting designer Jerold R. Forsyth, composer/sound designer John Stovicek, and dramaturg Leigh Ann Brienza.

Prayers of Sherkin runs February 7–19, 2006, at Villanova Theatre. Opening Night is Wednesday, February 8, 2006, at 8:00pm. On Thursday, February 16, at 8:00pm, Villanova Theatre will host “Speaker’s Night,” featuring a special post-show discussion with playwright Sebastian Barry and director James J. Christy.

For more information, call the Villanova Theatre Box Office at (610) 519-7474 or visit www.theatre.villanova.edu.

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