Séamus Scanlon wins the All-Ireland One-Act Drama Festival for “Dancing at Lunacy”

City College of New York librarian Séamus Scanlon, in the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education (City College Downtown),won the 2022 All-Ireland One-Act Drama Festival for his one act play “Dancing at Lunacy.”

The play was first staged in 2012 at The Cell Theater and directed by Kira Simring alongside “Blood” by Larry Kirwan as part of the Irish Cell. Two years later the play was part of “The McGowan Trilogy,” a series of one-act plays by Scanlon that tell the story of Irish revolutionary Victor McGowan, who ignores court martial protocol in “Dancing at Lunacy.”

The trilogy was a multiple award winner at the 2014 First Irish Drama Festival. Subsequent productions were staged in Hastings (UK), Galway and Westport, and in 2018 the Japanese language version was staged in Aichi, Hyogo and Tokyo.

The All-Ireland play festivals have run for over 76 years in Ireland and are an integral part of the Irish artistic scene. The Drama League of Ireland is a 32-county body founded in 1966 and oversees the development of drama in all of Ireland including summer workshops, writing prizes, newsletters and more.

About the City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization DegreeChoices ranks CCNY #3 nationally for social mobility. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. This year, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.