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Donations

Donations for the support of the activities of the Yeats Foundation may be sent to: 

W. B. Yeats Foundation

1655 North Decatur Road, Room 105

Atlanta, Georgia  30322

We are a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization. 

Yeats International Theatre Festival
at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin

From 1989 – 1993, the Yeats Foundation sponsored, with the help of the Coca-Cola Company, the Yeats International Theatre Festival at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Under the direction of James Flannery, the Festival featured productions of fifteen of the poet’s one act plays grouped under the following titles:

The Cuchulain Cycle: An Heroic Journey in Five Episodes

Masks of Transformation: Art and Revolution in the Modern World

Sacred Mysteries: a Celtic Way of Love and Sexuality

Art and Identity in Modern Ireland

Art and Spirituality in Ireland

Music Director of the Yeats Festival was Bill Whelan, the Grammy Award-winning composer of Riverdance. Besides members of the Abbey Company and other distinguished Irish actors, performers in the Yeats productions included film stars Ciarán Hinds in the role of the Celtic hero Cuchulain and Fionnuala Flanagan in the title role of The Countess Cathleen. Guest directors included internationally renowned puppeteer Roman Paska and Stan Wojewodski, Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and Dean of the Yale School of Drama.

The Yeats Festival also included lectures by noted public figures, artists and scholars such as: President Mary Robinson of Ireland, conductor Robert Shaw, feminist leader Betty Friedan, mythologist Michael Meade, storyteller Jay O’Callahan, Northern Irish political activist Bernadette Devlin McAlliskey, novelist Ben Kiely, poets Eavan Boland, Robert Bly, Theo Dorgan, Brendan Kennelley, John Montague and Nualla ni Dhomhnaill, historian Margaret Curtin, philosopher Mark Hedderman, theologian Terence McCaughey, critics Eric Bentley, Terence Brown, Denis Donoghue, William McCormack, and Conor Cruise O’Brien as well as painters Robert Ballagh and Anne Yeats, the daughter of the poet.

Concerts presented at the Festival included singer-songwriters Paul Brady, Elvis Costello and Christy Moore, the choral group Anúna and the avant-garde Israeli cellist Maya Beisser. The Festival also included a special appearance by the Toronto Dance Theatre.

The Yeats Festival placed a special emphasis on promoting peace and reconciliation, with exhibitions on themes such as the impact of violence in Northern Ireland, “Dúchas”, or the meaning of identity, and children’s art in Ireland North and South.

Symposiums, some of which drew international attention, included:

“The Role of the Muse in Ireland: Art as a Catalyst for Peace in Northern Ireland”

“Are Ireland’s Heroes Her National Enemies: A Response to Yeats’s ‘Cuchulain Cycle’”