Caitríona McLaughlin, photo by Richard Gilligan

(PRINCETON, NJ) -- Princeton University's Fund for Irish Studies continues its 2024-2025 series with a conversation with Caitríona McLaughlin, Artistic Director of Ireland's Abbey Theatre, and Jen Coppinger, Head of Producing at Abbey Theatre. Fund for Irish Studies Co-chair and Director of Princeton's Program in Theater and Music Theater Jane Cox will moderate the conversation on December 6, 2024 at 4:30pm at the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.

The theater is an accessible venue, and guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.

Founded as a national theater for Ireland in 1904 by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, the Abbey Theatre celebrates both the rich canon of Irish dramatic writing and the potential of future generations of Irish theater artists. In this event that marks the start of a new partnership between Princeton’s Fund for Irish Studies and the Abbey, McLaughlin and Coppinger will discuss their experiences running a national theater from artistic, programming, and producing perspectives. In February, Abbey’s Literary and New Work Director Ruth McGowan and actor Derbhle Crotty will share their points of view in a second conversation.

Jen Coppinger

“We're thrilled to introduce a multi-year conversation with the leaders and artists of one of Ireland's most storied cultural institutions, the Abbey Theater, whose creation and continued existence is interwoven with national cultural conversations,” said Cox. “We hope to invite our Princeton audience to explore the Abbey Theater as a case study in how a national arts institution is working to navigate a changing Ireland. We hope that by engaging in an in-depth conversation from multiple perspectives over time, we can think about how Irish arts institutions are trying to balance an existing rich canon with new voices; how they are thinking about what is urgent in Ireland, and how they are considering how Ireland interacts with the rest of the globe. We are excited to embark on this journey with our informed and engaged Princeton audience.”

Caitríona McLaughlin is currently artistic director and co-director of the Abbey Theatre. Her recent productions include Audrey or Sorrow by Marina Carr (in a co-production with Landmark Productions); The Weir by Conor McPherson; iGirl by Marina Carr; and Translations by Brian Friel, which the Abbey co-produced with Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and won Best Play Revival at the 2022 U.K. Theatre Awards. McLaughlin was previously associate director at the Abbey Theatre from 2017-2020, where her productions included The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh (with Conall Morrison); Citysong by Dylan Coburn Gray; On Raftery’s Hill by Marina Carr, for which she won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Director; and Two Pints by Roddy Doyle, which toured widely in Ireland and the United States. She has also worked with theater and opera companies on both sides of Ireland’s border, including Wexford Opera, HotForTheatre, Irish National Opera, The Local Group, and Landmark Productions. For RTÉ, she directed the television documentary O’Casey in the Estate.

Prior to directing, McLaughlin was a drama facilitator in Northern Ireland and worked with young people in conflict resolution. In London, she directed numerous productions, focusing primarily on new writing, and collaborated with the Royal Court in sourcing and developing a new theater space. In 2007, she received a Clore Fellowship and subsequently spent six summers with LAByrinth Theatre Company in New York developing new plays at their Summer Intensive. During this time, McLaughlin also directed a number of plays in New York City including Killers and other Family, part of Lucy Thurber’s OBIE Award-winning Hill Town Plays cycle, along with plays at Atlantic Theatre, Rattlestick, and Bard Summerscape.

Jen Coppinger joined the Abbey Theatre as head of producing in January 2018. She produces the shows that are performed both at the Abbey Theatre, on its Abbey and Peacock stages, as well as touring shows out of the Abbey. Coppinger also fosters the relationships that lead to the co-production of work and is responsible for new theater work, touring work, and productions of existing plays. Previously, she worked as producer for HotForTheatre, TheEmergencyRoom, and United Fall, as well as with independent artists including Kevin Barry, Paul Curley, Jody O’Neill, Shane O’Reilly, Raymond Scannell and Dylan Tighe. Coppinger has toured work extensively in Ireland and internationally, including a 2014 production of riverrun at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton. From 2015-2018, she was project manager for the Laureate for Irish Fiction Anne Enright for the Arts Council of Ireland. Coppinger has also served in varying capacities with Youth Theatre Ireland, United Fall, Theatre Forum, Dublin Fringe Festival, and Recovery through Art, Drama and Education (RADE).

The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired this year by Cox and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.

The Fund for Irish Studies affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.” The lecture series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts.

The Fund for Irish Studies website lists more information about the series. Additional events scheduled for the year include the previously mentioned Conversations with Abbey Theatre: Literary and New Work Director Ruth McGowan and Associate Artist and actor Derbhle Crotty on February 7; a reading by Irish novelist Colm Tóibín on February 21; and the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture delivered by author, critic and scholar Fintan O’Toole on March 21. These events in the series will require tickets; free tickets will be available to reserve through University Ticketing early in 2025. In addition, in collaboration with Princeton’s Humanities Council and Labyrinth Books, the series will include a reading by author Niall Williams on March 20.

The Fund for Irish Studies is generously sponsored by the Durkin Family Trust and the James J. Kerrigan Jr. ’45 and Margaret M. Kerrigan Fund for Irish Studies.

Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.