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Oscar Wilde Awards
A message from Trina Vargo, President
The US – Ireland Alliance
Program of Events
Our Supporters
Honorees
Stephen Colbert, Colin Davidson & Carrie Fisher
Musical Guests
Gavin James & Megan O’Neill
Poet
David Whyte
Auction Listing of Glen Hansard Portrait
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The US-Ireland Alliance
Welcomes you to the 10th Annual
Honoring
Stephen Colbert, Colin Davidson
& Carrie Fisher
1221 Olympic Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90404
February 19th, 6:30 pm – 11:00 pm
Welcome to the Oscar Wilde Awards. Tonight we honor Stephen
Colbert, Colin Davidson, and Carrie Fisher. We also welcome to the
stage, Irish singer-songwriters Gavin James and Megan O’Neill. If
you take a look at the page in this program that features Colin’s
painting of Glen Hansard, you can see how you may bid on this
painting until the auction closes at 9 p.m. tonight. All proceeds go to
our George J. Mitchell Scholarship program. A special thanks to
Accenture for being the lead sponsor of tonight’s event.
President
Trina Y. Vargo
Director,
Mitchell Scholarships
Serena Wilson
Honorary Board
Senator Susan Collins
Prime Minister Enda Kenny
Micheál Martin, T.D.
Senator George J. Mitchell
Advisory Board
Brian Barrington
Una Fox
John Gardiner
Garrett Kelleher
Gerry McCrory
Sean O’Sullivan
Hylda Queally
Jim Sheridan
We have been increasing our presence in LA beyond this annual
event with our Cultúr Club that connects the Irish, Irish Americans,
and ‘friends of’ in the entertainment industry.
Our flagship project, the George J. Mitchell Scholarship program,
allows future American leaders to study on the island of Ireland.
We’re incredibly proud of these young leaders. To give a sense of
how popular the program has become -- in the last three years, of
the ten individuals who were offered interviews for both the Rhodes
and Mitchell Scholarships, eight of the ten went for the Mitchell. We
are especially grateful that Sean O’Sullivan recently contributed
$300,000 to the program and we have also received recent
contributions from CRH and Morgan Stanley.
If you would like to support the US-Ireland Alliance, you may
contribute here.
And please feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to be involved
beyond this annual event.
Corporate Sponsors
The Doyle Collection
Counsel
James E. Fitzpatrick
Bridget Weiss
Arnold & Porter
Joe O’Malley
Hayes Solicitors
As always, a very special thanks to Katie and J.J. for sharing Bad
Robot with the Irish!
Trina Y. Vargo
Founder & President
Bad Robot February 19th, 2015
6:30 pm – 7:30 pm, reception
7:30 pm – 8:15 pm - Presentation of Oscar Wilde awards
Emcee
J.J. Abrams
A reading by David Whyte
Colin Davidson
Introduced by Garrett Kelleher
Carrie Fisher
Introduced by Stephen Fry
Stephen Colbert
Introduced by J.J. Abrams
9:15 pm musical performances by
Gavin James & Megan O’Neill
Thank you!
Major sponsors
Accenture
Bad robot
Supporters
Diageo Guinness USA, Resurgent film group
Friends
Arrowmac, Electus, HBO, Morgan Stanley, Variety,
Lightstream Entertainment, Olivers Sears Gallery, Michael Burns
Our committee
Drew Buckley, des carey, una fox,
Garrett Kelleher
Stephen Colbert is best known as the host, writer and
executive producer of the long-running Emmy® and
Peabody® Award-winning series "The Colbert Report" on
Comedy Central. Colbert is also a best-selling author and
accomplished actor. He will succeed David Letterman as
host of Late Show on CBS in September of this year.
Colbert’s first book, I AM AMERICA (And So Can You!),
spent 29 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller's List in
2007; debuting and occupying the #1 spot for 13 weeks.
His second book AMERICA AGAIN: Re-Becoming The
Greatness We Never Weren’t was released in October
2012 and spent 17 consecutive weeks on The New York
Times Bestseller’s List. Colbert won a 2014 Grammy
Award in the category of “Best Spoken Word Album” on
behalf of the audio book. In May 2012, Colbert also
released a children’s book titled I AM A POLE (And So Can
You!), which documents a pole’s quest for identity. Both
books were released by Grand Central Publishing.
On the music front, "A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest
Gift of All!," Colbert's one-hour original musical holiday
special with appearances and performances by some of America's top musical talent, won a Grammy® for Best Comedy
Album in 2010 and also received Emmy® nominations in three categories: Art Direction, Picture Editing and for Original
Music And Lyrics.
In April 2011 Colbert starred as Harry in the New York Philharmonic presentation of Stephen Sondheim's "Company"
along with Jon Cryer, Neil Patrick Harris, Christina Hendricks, Patti LuPone and Martha Plimpton, among others.
Beginning in 1997, Colbert was the longest-tenured and most diverse correspondent on "The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart." He helped the show win numerous Emmy® and Peabody Awards® as an on-air personality and writer for the
news satire. He contributed to AMERICA (THE BOOK): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (Warner Books) which
immediately topped The New York Times Bestseller List for 15 consecutive weeks. He also co-authored the critically
acclaimed book Wigfield (Hyperion) which Publisher's Weekly called "uproariously funny, painfully sharp and unlike
anything the genre of humorous fiction has seen before."
Raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Colbert graduated from Northwestern University and quickly made a name for
himself as a member of Chicago's famed Second City improv troupe where he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello. The
threesome moved to New York City where they created and starred in "Exit 57," a half-hour sketch comedy series
which ran for three seasons on Comedy Central. "Exit 57" received five CableACE nominations for Best Writing,
Performing and Comedy Series.
Colbert reunited with Sedaris and Dinello to create Comedy Central's first-ever live-action narrative series, the cult hit
"Strangers with Candy." Colbert's other on-camera appearances include shows such as HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
and NBC's "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." He was a cast member and writer on ABC's "The Dana Carvey Show,"
wrote for "Saturday Night Live" and was the voice of Ace on the "SNL" animated series "The Ambiguously Gay Duo." He
was also the voice of the President of the United States in Dreamworks animated film, “Monsters Vs Aliens.”
Colin Davidson is a renowned Northern Irish
contemporary artist whose works have achieved global
acclaim.
Born in Belfast in 1968, Colin graduated from the
University of Ulster in 1991 with a First Class Honors
Degree in Design and founded his own high successful
design company before deciding, at the turn of the
millennium, to become a full-time artist. Since then, his
works have been exhibited extensively worldwide.
An Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy since 2006,
Colin has won the Royal Ulster Academy Gold Medal
three times and is currently the President of the Royal
Ulster Academy of Arts.
Colin’s subjects have developed from the urban
cityscape, through sophisticated multi-layered paintings of city window reflections, to a current focus on grand scale
portraits which have won widespread recognition across the world.
His most recent works depict some of the most important leaders, protagonists and voices of this generation –
politicians, poets, writers, actors, musicians and members of the public with a profound story to tell. He crafts their
larger than life portraits to stir, provoke and inspire a silent conversation with his audience.
Colin searches for a moment when his subject is seemingly unaware of him being there, lost in his or her own thoughts.
It is an elusive period of time that he describes as ‘the moments between the words’, when he catches a glimpse of the
spirit of the person.
From his studio in the coastal town of Bangor, Co. Down, Colin has painted large-scale portraits of subjects including,
Brian Friel, Michael Longley, Simon Callow, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Duke Special, Ciaran Hinds, Paul Brady, Adrian Dunbar,
Barry Douglas, Gary Lightbody, Marketa Irglova, Glen Hansard, Lisa Hannigan, Mark Knopfler and Bronagh Gallagher prominent figures who have each, in their own way, shaped life and art over three decades. His painting of Seamus
Heaney was the last portrait for which Heaney sat.
In 2010, his portrait of musician Duke Special, entitled ‘Just Sharp Reminding’, won the Ireland-US Council/Irish Arts
Review Portraiture at the Royal Hibernian Academy. His portrait of musician Brian Kennedy was awarded the Perpetual
Gold Medal at the Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast, in October 2011. Also in 2011 ‘Thread the Light’, Colin’s portrait of
Glen Hansard, was selected to be exhibited at the prestigious BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in
London, and later was used on the cover of the Oscar-winner’s album ‘Rhythm and Repose’. In 2012, his portrait of
poet Michael Longley was awarded the prestigious visitor’s choice awards at the BP Portrait Awards at the National
Portrait Gallery in London.
A selection of Colin’s portraits is currently on display at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, where he personally presented his
work to HM The Queen and the President of Ireland during the Royal Visit to Northern Ireland in 201Colin’s work is in
public and corporate collections across Ireland and beyond including the Arts Council for Northern Ireland, the BBC, the
National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland (Limerick), Queen’s University Belfast, the Ulster Museum (Belfast), Standard
Life (London), the National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin), the Standard Chartered Bank of Asia and the Smithsonian
National Portrait Gallery (Washington DC).
Carrie Fisher, actress, writer and daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher made her film debut in Shampoo
and went on to become a cultural icon playing Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. Since then she has
starred in such hits as When Harry Met Sally, Hannah and Her Sisters and The Blues Brothers, to name a few. Her
television credits include Laverne & Shirley, Sex and the City, and 30 Rock, for which she received an Emmy
nomination.
Fisher’s bestselling novel, Postcards from the Edge, netted her the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel.
Fisher penned the Postcards screenplay for the Oscar nominated film starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep.
Three novels and two memoirs have followed: Delusions of Grandma, Surrender the Pink, The Best Awful, Wishful
Drinking and Shockaholic. Fisher performed her one-woman stage version of Wishful Drinking on Broadway,
which went on to be filmed for HBO and nominated for an Emmy Award.
Fisher will reprise her role of Princess Leia in the much-anticipated Star Wars, Episode VII
Gavin James recently signed a
recording deal with Capitol Records
USA. His “Live at Whelans” album,
which reached No. 1 on iTunes in
Ireland when released in December,
is now available worldwide. The
album features James performing in
the stripped-back environment of a
rapturously received hometown show. In addition, his biggest headline show to date, at the Olympia on 20th
March, is sold out (making him the first artist to sell out the Olympia without having released a studio album).
Gavin started playing guitar at the age of eight and comes from a family with a rich musical heritage – both of his
maternal great grandparents were famous Irish Opera singers. He has already won the Choice Music Prize for
Song of the Year. “Say Hello”, Gavin’s’ Irish debut EP, charted for more than six months, leading to a string of soldout headline dates and supporting tours with such artists as Lianne La Havas, Beth Orton, Kodaline and Marina &
The Diamonds, James Blunt and Ingrid Michaelson. Clash has praised him as “tender, emotional…no mean
talent” and Hotpress noted, “The fresh-faced soul machine possesses the power to hush a room.”
Gavin will play Eurosonic in the Netherlands where just this week, his soulful cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “The
Book of Love,” is getting massive radio airplay and has hit #1 on Shazam in Holland and his album is charting at
No.4. Last month Gavin returned to the US for a series of live dates in the run up the Grammys.
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley
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Michael.l.engel@msgraystone.com
Megan O’Neill Irish writer / performer, who has just had one
of her songs – Don’t You – picked up and used in the final
season episode of the hit ABC TV show Nashville, is delighted to
be invited to perform at the Bad Robot Studios of Hollywood
producer J.J. Abrams during Oscar Week in Santa Monica on
February 19th. This event has become one of the key events in
the Hollywood calendar attended by many influential movie
and TV executives.
Don’t You featured on the December 3rd episode of Nashville,
currently in its 3 season, an incredibly successful show produced jointly by Lionsgate / ABC and has been a huge
ratings hit in the US. It has also proved very popular in the UK, where country music is currently witnessing a
surge in interest.
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Originally from County Kildare, Ireland, Megan O’Neill is one of the most exciting new entrants to the world of
country pop music. A previous UCD Choral Scholar and long-time musician and song-writer, Megan is no stranger
to the world of performing arts and has been working hard to hone her craft since moving from Ireland to
Nashville and then to London to further her career. She was signed for management earlier in 2014 by Irish
management company Milestone Management, who also work with Irish pop duo Heathers.
Megan's music is a fresh mix of modern country and pop, with a fusion of distinctly Irish elements making for a
very unique sound. Currently based in London, Megan has written with many notable Nashville writers such as
Marc Beeson, Billy Austin, John Edwards, Brian Maher, Erik Halbig, Bruce Bouton, Mark Narmore and countless
others. She returns to Music City as often as possible.
These are busy times for Megan as industry plans get finalised for her first international commercial release in
2015. A taste of the type of material which will be on that release is now available to stream on Megan’s websites.
In a move indicative of the broader musical direction Megan is developing in addition to her strong Country roots,
the three tracks just recently recorded were produced by long-time Kodaline collaborator Philip Magee.
David Whyte grew up with a strong
imaginative influence from his Irish
mother among the hills and valleys of
his father’s Yorkshire. He now makes
his home in the Pacific Northwest of the
United States.
The author of seven books of poetry
and four books of prose, David Whyte
holds a degree in Marine Zoology and
has traveled extensively, including living
and working as a naturalist guide in the
Galapagos Islands and leading
anthropological and natural history
expeditions in the Andes, Amazon and Himalaya. He brings this wealth of experience to his poetry, lectures and
workshops.
His life as a poet has created a readership and listenership in three normally mutually exclusive areas: the literate
world of readings that most poets inhabit, the psychological and theological worlds of philosophical enquiry and
the world of vocation, work and organizational leadership.
An Associate Fellow at Said Business School at the University of Oxford, he is one of the few poets to take his
perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development, where he works with many European,
American and international companies. In spring 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Neumann
College, Pennsylvania.
In organizational settings, using poetry and thoughtful commentary, he illustrates how we can foster qualities of
courage and engagement; qualities needed if we are to respond to today’s call for increased creativity and
adaptability in the workplace. He brings a unique and important contribution to our understanding of the nature
of individual and organizational change, particularly through his unique perspectives on Conversational
Leadership.
Poetry.
Pilgrim (Many Rivers Press 2012)
Rver Flow: New & Selected Poems (Many Rivers Press 2006)
Everything is Waiting for You (Many Rivers Press 2003)
The House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press 1996)
Fire in the Earth (Many Rivers Press 1992)
Where Many Rivers Meet (Many Rivers Press 1990)
Songs for Coming Home (Many Rivers Press 1984)
Prose.
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (Many Rivers Press 2015)
The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self & Relationship (Riverhead 2009)
Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as A Pilgrimage of Identity (Riverhead 2001)
The Heart Aroused: Poetry & the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America
(Doubleday/Currency 1994)
In addition, David Whyte has authored an audio lecture series, a DVD and two albums of poetry and music.
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