{"id":228002,"date":"2017-03-28T12:24:32","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T16:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=228002"},"modified":"2022-07-19T15:43:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T19:43:41","slug":"irish-actor-tells-a-story-with-god-has-no-country-228002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/irish-actor-tells-a-story-with-god-has-no-country-228002\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish actor tells a story with God Has No Country<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 31 and April 1, Rochester will host the U.S. premiere of God Has No Country<\/em>, a one-man play written and performed by Irish actor Donal Courtney. The drama tells the story of Monsignor Hugh O\u2019Flaherty, an Irish cleric in German-occupied Rome who used his Vatican connections to harbor Jews and escaped prisoners of war during World War II. Ultimately, he saved more than 6,500 lives.<\/p>\n

Courtney will present the play at 7 p.m. on both nights, in Todd Theatre. There\u2019s no admission charge. The performances<\/a><\/strong>, along with an acting workshop, are part of this spring\u2019s Humanities Project<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Based in Dublin, Courtney has performed the show in Ireland for the last three years and will take it to Rome in the summer and to Singapore next fall. \u201cIt\u2019s not just an Irish story,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m eager to see how it plays to a U.S. audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a personal piece of art for Courtney. Like O\u2019Flaherty, he was raised in Killarney\u2014but the elder man\u2019s life story was unknown to him. \u201cI\u2019d gone to the same school, walked through the same streets, but I\u2019d never heard of him,\u201d Courtney says. He discovered that his own grandfather, a tailor, had made suits for O\u2019Flaherty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I researched, the more I realized I had in common with him,\u201d Courtney says.<\/p>\n

But O\u2019Flaherty, who died in 1963, was reticent about his heroism, and Courtney saw taking to the stage as an opportunity to make the priest\u2019s story more widely known. Topical issues permeate the play: religion, war, and humanitarian crisis, among them. And Courtney expands upon those questions in lively discussions with audiences after each performance.<\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

But he also has a strong regard for the sheer power of O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s tale.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the heart of it all, it\u2019s just a good story,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Courtney found his way to acting through his love of writing drama. A 1991 graduate of Ireland\u2019s famed Gaiety School of Acting, the country\u2019s national theater school, he began to study acting as a way of understanding playwriting. He has combined the two crafts ever since.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s an acting teacher, too\u2014Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender has called Courtney his mentor<\/a><\/strong>\u2014and he\u2019ll offer a master class, \u201cActing Irish,\u201d that\u2019s free and open to all. It will be held from noon to 4 p.m. at Sloan Studio in Todd Union on April 1.<\/p>\n

The class will focus on Irish drama and the nature of Irish storytelling. \u201cIrish theater has a different energy than English or American theater,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of Irish theater isn\u2019t action-based\u2014it\u2019s memory-based; it\u2019s based on the telling of stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storytelling is how the Irish \u201ckept our culture,\u201d he says, \u201cthe oral passing down of stories. And that\u2019s really where this play came from. I wanted it to be an oral version of the Monsignor\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rochester will host the U.S. premiere of God Has No Country,<\/em> a one-man play written and performed by Donal Courtney. The drama tells the story of Monsignor Hugh O\u2019Flaherty, who used his Vatican connections to harbor Jews, ultimately saving more than 6,500 lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":229692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13092],"tags":[21422,22172,22372,14,14092,4926,16072,32922],"class_list":["post-228002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-arts","tag-department-of-history","tag-department-of-modern-languages-and-cultures","tag-department-of-religion-and-classics","tag-events","tag-humanities-project","tag-international-theatre-program","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-susan-b-anthony-institute-for-gender-sexuality-and-womens-studies"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIrish actor tells a story with God Has No Country<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/irish-actor-tells-a-story-with-god-has-no-country-228002\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Irish actor tells a story with God Has No Country\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rochester will host the U.S. premiere of God Has No Country, a one-man play written and performed by Donal Courtney. 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