About Judging Shaw - the Shaw Day festival
George Bernard Shaw was the most famous Irishman in the world for much of his life, yet, for many, he is now largely forgotten. If he’s remembered at all in popular culture, it’s as the author of the original play on which My Fair Lady was based, Pygmalion. Coordinated by the Royal Irish Academy to mark the anniversary of Shaw’s death on November 2, 1950, Judging Shaw - the Shaw Day festival, is a new festival of all things Shavian, that aims to inspire fresh interest in Shaw’s life, work and legacy.
About George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was the first person ever to win a Nobel Prize (for literature) and an Oscar (for the screenplay for Pygmalion, in 1938); the only one other has been Bob Dylan. On the night Shaw died, Broadway and Times Square dimmed their lights in his honour. As well as being a prolific writer and polymath, he was one of the first global celebrities who carefully created and managed his brand. With his passionate interest in social justice and poverty, in human rights, in public discourse and in entertainment, he was a man with much to say to our times. He was a master of self-invention, a nobody who captured the zeitgeist and one of the first private individuals to understand fully how to generate—and how to use—global fame.
Shaw Day - the Shaw Day festival
This inaugural Shaw Day was designed around the publication of Judging Shaw, by Fintan O’Toole. This is the fourth book in the Royal Irish Academy’s award-winning ‘Judging’ series (which includes Judging Dev and Judging Cosgrave). The book is richly illustrated with over a hundred photographs and letters, many never previously published.
Highlights from the first Shaw Day included
- the publication of Judging Shaw, by Fintan O’Toole, by the Royal Irish Academy
- a live broadcast from the Dublin Book Festival of a panel discussion, Shaw: the world's first great personal brand, on RTÉ Radio 1 Arena
- a unique, intimate, promenade performance of a specially-commissioned script, Judging Shaw, by the leading theatre company Anú Productions
- new exhibitions on the life, work and legacy of Shaw at the Little Museum of Dublin and the O’Donoghue Theatre at NUI, Galway
- a screening of My Astonishing Self an RTÉ Animo documentary on Shaw’s life
- a series of lectures and an exhibition tour in the US, Canada and in Europe
Supported by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, this is a project coordinated by the Royal Irish Academy in partnership with RTÉ, the National Gallery of Ireland, Little Museum of Dublin, NUI, Galway, Anú Productions and the Dublin Book Festival.