As a drama student at Catholic University, Brianna Letourneau had the good fortune to spend the summer of 2007 studying theater in Ireland. Hearing plays by Brian Friel, John Millington Synge and other Irish dramatists performed by actors in their native accents was euphoric for a collegiate thespian. But perhaps more inspiring, on a practical level, was the night she sat in Galway’s Town Hall Theatre watching Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company perform Cormac McCarthy’s play “The Sunset Limited.”
“Seeing American actors performing an American play on that stage — that was something that sounded like a fabulous, never-gonna-happen-to-me experience” as an actress, Letourneau recalled.
This summer, that never-gonna-happen thing happened to her when the District’s Keegan Theatre Company opened its 2014 tour to Ireland with a three-day run of “A Few Good Men” at the Town Hall. Letourneau was onstage playing Jo. The 16-person contingent returned home happy from the Emerald Isle on Sunday afternoon, about 24 hours after the final curtain came down in Kilkenny.
