Person Page 431

Source: Wikipedia July 2009
Vincent Gerard Dowling (born September 7, 1929, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish-American actor and director.
He was formerly married to the late Irish Actor, Brenda Doyle (who died in a car crash in 1981). He is the father of Actor Bairbre Dowling, and the former father-in-law of Irish actor, Colm Meaney.
Dowling first came to prominence in Ireland in the 1950s for his role as Christy Kennedy in the long-running radio soap opera, The Kennedys of Castleross. He served as Artistic and Producing Director of The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (now the Great Lakes Theater Festival) in Cleveland, Ohio from 1976 to 1984.(1) During his tenure at GLSF, he directed, produced and acted in many classical works, by Shakespeare and others.(1) He is credited with discovering award-winning actor Tom Hanks.(1)
Dowling founded the Miniature Theatre of Chester (now the Chester Theatre Company), in Chester, Massachusetts, in 1990.(2)
Dowling's first autobiographical book is Astride the Moon: A Theatrical Life, ISBN 0863278280 (Wolfhound Press, 2000): "I was the sixth of seven children. My mother cordially disliked my father; I wonder how many they might have had if she'd liked him. I arrived with my mother's lunch on 7 September 1929 the crash was heard around the world ! "
"A book about an extraordinary Irish life, the quintessential shabby-gentile Dublin childhood, the stories of growing up and of girls and more girls! Vincent Dowling is a flamboyant lover of life-his life has been an amazing one where he has mixed with stars and politicians and always managed to do his own thing. These pages are filled with life and energy and will be enjoyed by anyone who loves life and the theatre.
For the past five decades, Vincent Dowling has been a key figure at the centre of Irish, British, and American theatre as an actor, producer, director, and artistic director.
He is best known for his two spells spent as artistic director of Dublin's world famous Abbey Theatre. The intense politics of the Theatre are exposed and the joy of bringing successful productions to the West End and Broadway is ably demonstrated in his lively prose. His key achievement while at the Abbey was the re-establishment of bringing successful plays like The Plough and the Stars and Shadow of a Gunman to Broadway, the West End, Moscow, Paris, and Florence.
He began in British theatre in the early 1950s and A Theatrical Life is peppered with anecdotes about his time spent touring the country, playing the lofty heights of the West End or Stratford one night and Kidderminster the next. His views on the various towns and cities visited have not been softened by the intervening years! (Bradford is described as "the grimmest town we had seen.")
He became enamoured with American theatre in the 1980s and moved to the U.S. and among other roles served as artistic and producing director of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival for nine years. In this role he is credited with giving Tom Hanks his big break by inviting him to take the lead in The Taming of the Shrew in 1977 and since then has acted as a mentor to the double Oscar-winning actor. Vincent won an Emmy for his television production of The Playboy of the Western World and has staged his one-man show in New York, Chicago, and on three occasions at the White House.
Dowling spares no blushes in his recounting of the shenanigans, partying, and bed-hopping that went on during his time in theatre.
Vincent Dowling was born in 1929 in Dublin and has been involved in every aspect of theatre on an international level. He currently lives in North Chester, Massachusetts, where he founded and runs The Miniature Theatre of Chester. He has won several international awards for his services to theatre and is currently an active member of the International Artistic Directorate of the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London."
Dowling's papers, from 1976 onward, are housed at the Kent State University and John Carroll University libraries.(3.)

Wikipedia Page 4 Nov 2019:

Bairbre Dowling (27 March 1953 - 20 January 2016) was an Irish Actor.
She was born in Dublin as Barbara Patricia Dowling, the daughter of actor Vincent Dowling and Actor Brenda Doyle, who died in a car crash in 2016. She had three sisters, Louise, Valerie and Rachel, and a half-brother, Cian.(1) Between 1982 and 1994 she was married to actor Colm Meaney,(2)(3) with whom she had a daughter, Brenda, in 1984.(4)
Dowling acted with her husband in the PBS television film Playboy of the Western World in 1983,(5) in John Huston's 1987 film The Dead,(6) and in the 1994 drama War of the Buttons.(7)
In 1970 she was part of the company at the Abbey Theatre, where she appeared in The Becauseway(8) (1970) and Rites(9) (1973).
In 2011 she appeared in a play by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, Temporal Powers;(10) this was a Mint Theatre(11) production presented as part of the Teresa Deevy project.
Bairbre was a member of The California Artists Radio Theatre ensemble and performed in over 30 of their live radio plays.

Filmography(

Film
Zardoz (1974)
Cry of the Innocent (television film, 1980)
Playboy of the Western World (television film, 1983)
The Long Journey Home (television film, 1987)
The Dead (1987)
War of the Buttons (1994)
Changing Habits (1997)

Plays
The Becauseway (1970) - Girl
Rites (1973) - Girl
Temporal Powers (2011)

Television
Murder, She Wrote (1995)
ER (1997)
Star Trek: Voyager (2000)
Crossing Jordan (2003)
Days of Our Lives (2007)

References)
1. "Profile: Dowling, Vincent (1929-2013)". Contemporary Authors - via HighBeam Research (subscription required). 2006-01-01. Archived from the original on 2014-06-10.
2. http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-Actor-bairbre-dowling-62-dies-after-short-illness-34403225.html
3 "'I had no time for them crying into their pints'". The Irish Times - via HighBeam Research (subscription required). 2007-09-22. Archived from the original on 2013-11-11.
4. "Stroke-ism and greed: why Colm Meaney is convinced we've sold our souls". The Mail on Sunday. 2012-08-26 - via Questia Online Library.
5, Playboy of the Western World (TV 1983) Internet Movie Database. Retrieved: 2013-03-14.
6. The Dead (1987) Internet Movie Database. Retrieved: 2013-03-14.
7. War of the Buttons (1994) Internet Movie Database; retrieved 1 February 2016.
8. "The Abbey Theatre Archive".
9. "The Abbey Theatre Archive".
10. "The Teresa Deevy Archive".
11. "Mint Theatre Company".