Suggested Readings to accompany
the production of ONCE
at the New York Theatre Workshop

Revolution Books’ reading lists for the New York Theatre Workshop plays will include books and DVD’s which illuminate the history and themes in the plays. We looked for companion novels, films and non-fiction works which reveal something about the deep-structure contradictions beneath the play’s plot/setting. The recommendations reflect RB’s purpose as a place to find the books and engagement about why the world is the way it is and how it could be radically changed. 

ONCE, the play is based on “ONCE” the 2006 Irish film written and directed by John Carney. Set in Dublin, the film tells the story of an Irish musician (played by Glen Hansard of the Irish folk rock band The Frames) and a young woman, a musician from Czech Republic (played by Markéta Irglová) who has immigrated to Dublin and sells flowers on the street. Hansard and Irglová composed and performed all of the original songs in the movie.  The film won the 2007 Independent Spirit award for best foreign film.   DVD: $15.00
ONCE the film soundtrack received a Grammy nomination. The song “Falling Slowly” won the Academy Award for best original song.   CD: $12.00

Girl: “For an island this tiny to make all these writers and poets and musicians! This is insane. And yet on this rock in the middle of the ocean you make men and women who for centuries can speak and sing of what it is to be a person…”

Malachy McCourt’s History of Ireland
New York Times best-selling author Malachy McCourt offers an authoritative and engrossing chronicle of Ireland from pagan times to the present, told through the life stories of a huge range of artists, writers, political figures and musicians… Saint Patrick, Oliver Cromwell, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Charles Parnell, Sinead O’Connor…  Paper $15.95

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
This collection encompasses the entire arc of his career, from reworkings of ancient Irish myths and legends to meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising. Paper, $20.00

Guy: “Terrible to be that way – wastin’ life ‘ cause you’re frightened by it…”

The Dubliners, by James Joyce
Short stories by Joyce which give a sense of the city and the people in early 1900’s, “…penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society.” Paper $6

Samuel Beckett  - Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

As a young man Beckett took dictation (literally) from James Joyce, but he ultimately moved toward a more concentrated, even compulsive style-- as he turned his attention to consciousness itself.  Paper, $15.95

Andrej: “A million times heartbroken and Dublin keeps on going.”

Sean O’Casey - Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, & The Plough and the Stars
Seamus Heaney: "O'Casey's characters are both down to earth and larger than life . . .recoil from tyranny and his compassion for the oppressed were an essential--as opposed to a moral and thematic--part of his art."   The plays take place in Dublin during the Irish civil war of 1922-23, and portray the lives of tenement dwellers, bricklayers, street vendors, charwomen… Paper, $16.00

J.M. Synge - Playboy of the Western World, Riders of the Sea
In Playboy of the Western World, a story of the local rise of a hero, his fall from grace, and subsequent rehabilitation. Riots took place when it was first presented in Dublin.
Riders to the Sea is only a few pages in length—“a somber masterpiece.” Paper, $5.95

Enda Walsh - Disco Pigs & Sucking Dublin    
(Walsh wrote the play ONCE;his MISTERMAN is being performed at St. Ann’s Warehouse.)
“Not since The Clockwork Orange have we been so riveted by teenage creations as disturbingly magnetic as Pig and Runt.... Scintillating...” Guardian (UK).     “Enda Walsh's stunning 70-minute play erupts like a volcano. I use the word "stunning' as near its literal meaning as possible: the play leaves you shaken, uprooted, buffeted by a sense of shock and exhilaration' Sunday Times.     Disco Pigs premiered in Cork in 1996, played the Dublin Theatre Festival and had its UK premiere at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1997, transferring to Bush Theatre, London.  Paper, $18.95

“Cause if your skin was soil/How long do you think before they start digging
And if your life was gold/How long do you think you’d stay alive..”  -- GOLD


Frances A. Boyle - United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law
Published September 2011.  Francis Boyle, an American expert on international law who has served on the board of Amnesty International, argues in this book the "Potato Famine" was really British genocide against the Irish. The book deals with the history of the continuous British military occupation of 6 northeast counties of Ireland, discussing I.R.A. resistance, the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaties in 1986 and 2006.  Paper, $16.95

Denis O’Hearn - Nothing But an Unfinished Song:  Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation
Well-researched biography of the hunger-striker who gave his life in the struggle for political recognition of the Republican struggle in Ireland. Sands’ capacity to recognize 'opportunities' in the most brutal forms of detention helped change the trajectory of Irish politics. Paper, $16.95

Listen to these other great Irish musicians: Christy Moore, Van Morrison, Luka Bloom, The Clancy Brothers, Sinead O'Connor, Pogues, Black 47 (selected CD’s available at Revolution Books)

Guy: “Does Dublin feel like home?”

Why are there Czech immigrants in Dublin?  Here’s an article that reveals one piece of the puzzle…
“…The incorporation of the East European countries into the EU has been a source of competitive advantage of West European capital in the world market. The East European economies are ruled by fully developed capitalist classes—and some of these economies invest capital in the Third World. But they stand in a subordinate relationship to the larger and more powerful ruling classes of the EU… The EU has restructured and integrated the East European economies into larger region-wide and global production chains. East European workers face poorer working conditions and lower pay scales, along with less generous social programs, than do the populations in much of Western Europe. In Slovakia, wages in the auto industry are one-eighth of those in Germany, while productivity in the auto industry (led by VW and Peugeot) is soon expected to be the highest in the world.…An estimated 5 to 6.5 million undocumented workers currently live and work in Europe. They are an “illegalized transnational labor force”—working in such sectors as agriculture, construction, domestic services, etc. Some of these sectors would, as a recent study by three progressive scholars observes, ‘likely collapse without access to cheap and unregulated migrant labor.’ These undocumented workers are often not able to gain minimum wages or work with labor contracts…”
To read the whole article, “Shifts and Faultlines in the World Economy and Great Power Rivalry: The European Union as a Potential Rival to U.S. Dominance” by Raymond Lotta, go to revcom.us   Revolution #138. August 3, 2008

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BAsics from the Talks and Writings of Bob Avakian  
Revolution Books also recommends this new book of quotations and short essays from Bob Avakian. The book speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation. Avakian is the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
"If you don’t have a poetic spirit—or at least a poetic side—it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leaders of a socialist state."                 -- from "Basics, " Chapter 6, # 5, $10

Book Suggestions from the Irish Arts Center (553 West 51st Street, NYC, 212-757-3318, www.irishartscenter.org):

Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (Eileen O’Connell) - Lament for Art O’Leary
In this beautiful 18th century love poem, originally written in Irish, Eileen O’Connell laments the passing of her husband Art O’Leary, whose death was a direct result of the Penal Laws of Ireland at the time. The lament, or caoineadh, is part of the oral tradition of Ireland.


Belinda McKeon – Solace      McKeon’s first novel Solace was just published in spring 2011, and continues to receive great acclaim in Ireland and the U.S. Solace deftly uses lyricism and compassion to present loss and sorrow in a beautiful way.



Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin - The Sun-fish (2009) and Collected Poems (2008)
One of Ireland ’s most well-regarded contemporary poets with over 10 publications. Her reading of “The Sun Fish” can be heard streaming at irishartscenter.org, along with selections from 16 other Irish poets that have participated in the annual Irish Arts Center PoetryFest.


Joseph O’Neill - Netherland and Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin
Both Irish authors have written about a post-September 11 New York in engaging and compassionate ways, earning O’Neill, who was born in Cork of half-Irish and half-Turkish ancestry, a PEN/Faulkner award, and McCann a National Book Award.

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