Patrick Ball plays Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater this Sunday evening

“William Butler Yeats was an astonishingly complex individual,” says harpist and storyteller Patrick Ball, describing the legendary Irish poet and playwright — and sometime politician and mystic philosopher — whose mysterious, atmospheric poetry has solidly placed its creator within the ranks of the greatest literary figures of the 20th Century. “He was brilliant of course, but he was also very, very strange,” Ball notes. “As an artist and musician and storyteller myself, that rather appeals to me.”

This Sunday, at Cinnabar Theater, Patrick Ball will be presenting his brand-new one-man-show, “Come Dance with Me in Ireland: Encounters with W.B. Yeats.” In the show, which includes plenty of music performed by Ball on the Celtic harp, he takes audiences on a journey across Ireland, introducing us to several other tourists and tour guides – as they follow in the path of Yeats, whose work, life and world view begin to inspire and challenge them all in surprising ways.

The play, to a degree, is based on a real experience. Sort of.

William Butler Yeats, says Ball, “Was very, very strange.”

Last year, Ball applied for and eventually won a month-long fellowship to visit the Moore Institute in Galway, Ireland, where he was invited to come study the life of Yeats, in particular focusing on the author’s contribution to the Celtic Renaissance of the 19th and 20th Centuries — with special emphasis on Yeats’ relationship with the Celtic harp.

“There’s actually no relationship between Yeats and the Celtic harp at all,” Ball notes, with a laugh, “but that’s what we wrote in our proposal, and it obviously didn’t hurt us.”

Ball’s co-fellow on the trip was Peter Glazer, a professor of theater arts at UC Berkeley, who co-wrote Ball’s acclaimed one-man-show “O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music,” showcasing the music and stories of the blind 18th-century Irish bard Turlough O’Carolan. In Ireland, the pair was granted access to private libraries, special university resources, and much more.

“It turns out,” Ball says, “that the National University of Ireland at Galway has somehow acquired the archives of all the major theaters in Ireland, including the Abbey Theater.”

That’s the theater that Yeats co-founded in Dublin in 1904, for which the author contributed numerous plays — which have since been digitized and placed in an electronic W.B. Yeats database.

Patrick Ball in his previous one-man-show ‘O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music’

“We spent a lot of time going through various scripts, and playbills, and recordings and things, all having to do with Yeats and his work with the theater,” recalls Ball. “Best of all, we had lots of time to go all around the country, visiting the places that Yeats loved and wrote about, and drew inspiration from for his poetry.”

Fortunately, Ball says, the fellowship did not include a requirement that he and Glazer produce anything in particular as a result, though the immersive experience did place the idea for a new play in Ball’s fertile imagination.

“I guess you can call it a play,” he laughs again, “though it’s not like anything I’ve done before, really. It’s an interesting cross between a play and a concert, incorporating all of the most appealing aspects of Yeats life that I picked up during my visit to Ireland.”

Click ‘Here‘ to read the full story in the Petaluma Argus-Courier

Come Dance with Me in Ireland: Encounters with W.B. Yeats
What? The new one-man-show by Patrick Ball
When? Sunday, March 12, 7:30 p.m.
Where? Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N.
How much? General, $25 in advance, $30 at the door; $15 Youth, $20 at the door