Frank McGuinness + Ernest Hartmann

The Irish playwright explores the Celtic dreamscape with psychiatry professor Ernest Hartmann.
Presented as part of Imagine Ireland, 2011
Presented with The Irish Repertory Theatre

Frank McGuinness is an Irish playwright and novelist who lives and works in Dublin. Some of his plays include The Factory Girls, Mutabilitie,Gates of Gold, There Came a Gypsy Riding and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme . He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1993 for his play Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. He has adapted works of Lorca, Chekhov, Brecht, Strindberg, Pirandello and Sophocles. Currently, Mr. McGuinness teaches creative writing at the University College Dublin.

Ernest Hartmann is Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, both in Boston. The author of nine books, including Boundaries in the Mind (1991), Dreams and Nightmares: The New Theory and most recently The Nature and Functions of Dreaming and Boundaries: a New way to Look at the World. The author of over 325 articles in professional journals, he has written much about the close relationship of the dream and the work of art, especially the poem. His theory puts forward that dream imagery pictures the emotion of the dreamer, and the intensity of the central imagery is a measure of the power of the underlying emotion. Based on research on dreams after trauma, it is largely supported by a systematic study of dreams before and after 9/11/01.