New York's Irish Arts Center announces its spring 2025 season

Irish Arts Center (IAC), based in New York City and renowned for presenting dynamic, inspiring, collaborative experiences of the evolving arts and culture of Ireland and Irish America in an environment of warm Irish hospitality, announces its spring 2025 season.

With a bold and inventive new play about the historic battle to publish Joyce’s "Ulysses" stateside as its centerpiece, Spring 2025 continues to reinforce IAC’s presence as an essential cultural bridge. Harnessing the momentum from its recent Spirit of Ireland Gala celebrating Meryl Streep and raising $3.25 million to support its annual programming and operations, the organization’s spring season demonstrates IAC’s vitality and strength after three years since its transformation into one of New York’s most exciting multidisciplinary artistic hubs.

Programming in various artistic disciplines, in presentations of both vast and intimate scale, continues in its state-of-the-art new building on 11th Street this season as the organization ramps up planning for Phase 2 of its vision for an expanded future: the redevelopment of its original building on 51st Street.

The season includes a five-week-long North American premiere of Colin Murphy’s "The United States vs Ulysses", directed by Conall Morrison. The world-changing potential of cultural intersection—the very thing IAC has emphasized throughout its existence—is what’s at stake in this funhouse vision of 1930s radio performers reenacting the courtroom battle for the future of James Joyce’s "Ulysses" against U.S. censorship.

The production, which the Irish Times praised is staged by Morrison “with verve” and “entertainingly and skillfully brought to life” with “a deliciously 1930s radio-serial framework [and] terrific ensemble of six,” comes to IAC and New York audiences with its original cast, April 30–June 1.

In an era of soaring book censorship in the U.S., The United States vs Ulysses celebrates the power of ideas on a page—and, specifically, of Joyce’s groundbreaking tome—as it offers a studied examination of the forces that benefit from holding culture in stasis by keeping them from the public.

Another visionary work this season similarly revels in the influence of monumental artistic legacies across the Atlantic: the IAC commission "Begin Anywhere", from pioneering Dublin-based company John Scott Dance and acclaimed musician and composer Mel Mercier, draws on the artistry of Merce Cunningham and John Cage (February 12–16).

Surrounding this new work from Scott and Mercier (for eight dancers from Ireland, France, and New York and three musicians with backgrounds ranging from Sean Nós to electronic), the evening-length performance also includes three Cunningham solos.

The season is also an occasion of significant return for an acclaimed artist to an organization with a vastly expanded capacity for presenting big, bold concerts. Six-time Grammy Award winner Arturo O’Farrill, “one of our greatest living pianists” (Downbeat Magazine) comes to the new Irish Arts Center with his Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra for a series of big band concerts (their first in the new building), presented with Belongó, February 26–28.

Arturo O’Farrill with his Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.

Colliding Irish folk and Afro-Latin music, it’s another work activating the power of intercultural dialogue and connection at IAC.  It is a sort of homecoming performance for O’Farrill, the first artist to perform in IAC’s new home, during the Center’s virtual gala, "Together Until We Gather", in December 2020.

As with O’Farrill’s performances, spring 2025's musical offerings come in the form of groundbreaking large-scale shows in the state-of-the-art JL Greene Theatre—as well as lively up-close acoustic performances in the organization’s Devlin Café.

Ye Vagabonds - a band “both timeless and utterly of our times” that “tap[s] into the beating heart of the tradition” (The Irish Times—likewise returns to IAC, March 11–12. They perform in the JL Greene Theatre, having last sold-out concerts in the organization’s original space in early 2020.

Ye Vagabonds.

Grammy-winning "Riverdance" composer Bill Whelan, who was in residence at IAC in 2011 in collaboration with Athena Tergis, celebrates his 75th birthday with IAC in two nights of music with fellow artists and special guests, June 26-27.

In the Devlin Café, two beloved series continue: "Big City Folk Song Club" (February  6, March 13 and April 24), hosted by acclaimed songwriter Niall Connolly, and Traditional Irish Sessions (January 31, February 21, and April 11). 

Echoing The United States vs Ulysses’ revelations of the transportive experience of literature considered aloud and in community, events this season gather some of today’s most striking literary voices into intimate engagements with audiences.

National Book Award Winner and New York Times Bestseller Colum McCann, praised for his “stunning language,” “psychological acuity,” “humor and imagination,” and “sheer ambition” and “audacity” (The New York Times), celebrates the launch of his thirteenth book "Twist", March 25.

Caoilinn Hughes comes to IAC for the U.S. paperback launch of her “riotous, ambitiously structured new novel” (The New York Times) of “ferocious intelligence and furious wit” (The Guardian), "The Alternatives", April 17. IAC continues its "Debut Voices" series with a reading by Garrett Carr from his first novel, "The Boy from the Sea", May 15.

Caoilinn Hughes to launch her new book "The Alternatives".

Throughout the season, Dublin-based artist Paul Hughes’ paintings will be on display in the exhibition "I am here & I am unwaiting", filling IAC’s halls with vibrant abstract landscapes, February 1–June 21, with an artist talk on March 6.

Beyond its own building, IAC reteams and continues to foster relationships with other vanguard NY cultural institutions to support the presentation of exhilarating work from Irish artists throughout the city. These include Enda Walsh and Anna Mullarkey’s “dazzling achievement” (The Guardian, in a five-star review) of a song cycle "SAFE HOUSE" at St. Ann’s Warehouse (February 15–March 2); Brokentalkers and Adrienne Truscott’s “hilarious” (The Sunday Independent) "Masterclass" at the Skirball Center (March 28–29); and Seán Curran Company’s "PATH" and "Everywhere All the Time" at the Skirball Center (April 18–19).

See a full list of programs at IrishArtsCenter.org.