Caraid O'Brien

Caraid O'Brien (born December 20, 1974 ) is an Irish-born, US-based writer, performer, translator and theater director. Although she is from an Irish Catholic background, she is best known for her work with material originally written in Yiddish. Former Theater J Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr has praised "her superb theatrical ear and facility for transforming Yiddish work into relevant contemporary text."

Family, youth and education O’Brien was born in Galway in 1974, one of five children of Michael and Patricia Gill O'Brien. and, by O'Brien's account, her paternal grandmother was a great storyteller.

She discovered Yiddish literature and Jewish American literature as a teenager, as part of her high school studies of American literature. At the time, she already had a strong interest in Irish literature, Grade's My Mother's Sabbath Days inspired her to decide to learn Yiddish. O'Brien would later write a new translation of that play. ), then still alive and in New York, who became one of O'Brien's mentors. This resulted in a November 1999 production at Show World, historically a porn venue at Eighth Avenue at 43rd Street,

Beginning in 2002, O'Brien directed the James Joyce "Bloomsday" readings at Symphony Space. she went with the radio side and became the director of the annual radio broadcast, where she also performs Molly Bloom's soliloquy (the last chapter of Ulysses). In 2017, she performed in the first-ever Yiddish-language production of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros at the Castillo Theatre on Theatre Row.

In 2022 the Jewish-American Theater J and the Irish-American arts organization Solas Nua, both based in Washington D.C., co-commissioned O'Brien to translate and adapt Sholem Asch's previously untranslated play Rabbi Doctor Silver; this was Theater J's first commissioned translation.

Works

Original works Colbert Quigley: a three act American tragedy (Finalist, Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays) The Sandpiper (Leonard Nimoy Thalia, 2004), a verse comedy about three generations of Irish artists.

Translations from Yiddish God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch (performed 1999 at Show World, NYC) Jake the Mechanic by Dovid Pinski (an adaptation, commissioned by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture) The Dead Man by Sholem Asch (commissioned by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, performed at Eldridge Street Project, 2003) Motke Thief by Sholem Asch (commissioned by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, performed at University Settlement, 2005) Sholem Asch Underworld Trilogy (God of Vengeance, Motke Thief, The Dead Man); White Goat Press (undated), ISBN 9798987160992