Professor James W Flannery
Professor James W. Flannery has dedicated much of his life to championing Irish arts and culture.
As a scholar and artist, he has particularly worked to promote the plays of W.B. Yeats both in Ireland and in the United States. He has taught at Emory University in Atlanta since 1982, when he moved there to found the theatre programme. Now retired from Emory, he holds a distinguished emeritus professorship in the arts and humanities.
Interest in Irish Culture
Flannery explains that his interest in Irish culture was nurtured by his Irish parents from a young age. As he explains, “Both my parents were born in Ireland. My father was an Irish revolutionary from historic Clonmacnoise, County Offaly and my mother grew up in an Irish speaking family from West Clare where her father was a revered local seanchaí and musician. I was thus raised with a very, very strong sense of Irish culture and all its richness.”
Education and Professional Career
After earning a B.A. in music and English at Trinity College (Hartford), Flannery pursued a Master of Fine Arts in acting and directing at the Yale School of Drama, graduating in 1961. He then obtained a Doctorate in English and Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College Dublin where he became very interested in the work of Yeats, particularly his plays, and wrote an acclaimed book, W. B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice.
Professor Flannery went on to stage almost all of Yeats’s plays in professional and university theatres, drawing on his extensive academic knowledge as well as his study of the specialized techniques required to stage Yeats successfully, including voice, verse-speaking, singing, mime, mask work and dance.
Theatre and Film
From 1989 to 1993 he produced a highly successful Yeats Festival at the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland, thanks to the help of Don Keough, the President of the Coca-Cola Company. “That event,” he says, “received rave reviews and I think persuaded Ireland’s major critics that, when staged with the thought, talent and resources they require, the plays of Yeats are as exciting and important as his poetry.”
Another major artistic project Flannery points to is A Southern Celtic Christmas Concert, a film produced for Georgia Public Broadcasting that has been distributed on PBS stations throughout the United States. He says: “That film features some of the top traditional musicians of Ireland, including Moya Brennan, Cormac DeBarra and John Doyle, as well as a rare television interview with Seamus Heaney.
Filmed amidst the haunting monastic ruins of Glendalough, Heaney talks about the influence of mediaeval Celtic spirituality on his work. Also featured in that program are major performers from the American South, thus demonstrating the connections between these two traditions”
The Presidential Distinguished Services Award
In addition to his achievements in the theatre, Flannery is also an accomplished tenor whose book and recording of the famed Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore is considered definitive. He feels that the Presidential Distinguished Services Award is a great way to recognise the achievements of people with Irish connections abroad, and to celebrate their contributions to Ireland both on the island and throughout the world.
He says of receiving the award, “It was profoundly moving to me as a tangible recognition from the Irish Government because it acknowledges that what you’ve done is important and we acknowledge it and thank you for it. I was moved to tears by the honour. My family was very proud of it as well. It’s one of the proudest achievements of my life.”