Shame, longing, and passion lie beneath the surface lives of the characters in these three stories. 

Failing a moral test, and the cost of love and loss in stories by American and Irish contemporary writers.

“The Dead,” Part 2 by James Joyce is performed by Rene Auberjonois, Fionnula Flanagan and Isaiah Sheffer.

James Joyce’s classic story, “The Dead”, takes place at a New Year’s dinner-dance in Dublin in 1904. It is filled with colorful personalities, and is a glimpse of a bygone era.

The hostesses of the annual dinner are the Misses Kate and Julia Morkan, frail elderly aunts of the story’s central characters, Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta, the crisis in whose marriage provides the dramatic through-line of this deeply emotional story.