Stephen F. Austin State University

In the first summer term of 2010, students in the SFA School of Theatre will have an opportunity to study Irish theatre in Dublin and London. Regular classes will be held on the SFA campus at the beginning of the term, after which the group will go overseas for a total of 13 nights in Dublin and 3 in London.

The program began in 2006, with a 2-week trip to Dublin, hosted by the Beckett Centre at Trinity College Dublin. While the details will vary from trip to trip, students can count on the opportunity to see at least three professional theatre productions, to take guided historical tours of the city, to get backstage tours at major theatres, to have seminars with local scholars and arts professionals, and in general to engage in the life of one of the world’s cultural centers. The London section of the trip provides further opportunities to see professional theatre, and to enhance the cultural and historical aspects of the course.

The trip is led by Dr. Rick Jones, Associate Professor of Theatre at SFA, a published historian and critic of Irish theatre.

Summer 2006 Ireland Trip
(click on photos to enlarge)

The 2006 group gathers in front of the Camponile at Trinity College Dublin.	The statue of the Children of Lir in the Garden of Remembrance, on Dublin's O'Connell Street.
Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney signs a book for SFA theatre student Sara Boland-Taylor after a poetry reading at the 2006 Dublin Writers Festival.	A commemoration of the heroes of the Easter Rising of 1916 appears in the windows of one of the buildings on Dame Street in Dublin.
The Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland, where SFA students saw a production and got a backstage tour.	One of the dorms on the main campus of Trinity College Dublin.
The Beckett Centre, our academic home base at Trinity College Dublin.
The Rubrics, the oldest building on the Trinity College Dublin campus.