Larry Switzky, Virginia Costello and David Staller will host the topic for the May ISS Studio gathering on Sunday May 24th at 7pm Irish time – 2 pm EDT – 11 am PDT

The Topic: – Shaw’s campaign against the destructive and oppressive idealism of the nineteenth century has been so successful that we tend to think of him as a thoroughgoing anti-idealist. But by the standards of our times, he is outrageously idealistic. We’d like to explore how Shaw’s continual proposals of political and social counterfactuals might lead us towards a usable notion of idealism and towards a different account of him as an artist and a thinker. In particular, we wonder how the Shaw Festival’s production of Heartbreak House, one of Shaw’s most pessimistic plays, when staged in the shadow of 2026 is an invitation to search (as Shaw did) for the embers of a necessary yet estranged idealism – particularly in the face of what Hannah Arendt calls “dark times,” the “shattering of a shared world.”

Here is the zoom link and look forward to seeing you next week

Topic: ISS Studio Gathering May 24th 2026

Time: May 24, 2026 07:00 PM Dublin

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting chat link

Meeting ID: 654 5978 2862

Passcode: 897253