No Smiling Eyes : Irish Cultural Center Struggles to Bounce Back From Fire

The chairs, stage curtains, costumes, props and Irish-American memorabilia that for nearly eight years filled a cramped storefront theater and coffeehouse on Hollywood Boulevard are now neatly packed away in storage a few blocks away.

For all intents and purposes the Celtic Arts Center, where Irish-Americans came to learn Gaelic, watch plays and catch up on the news back on the Emerald Isle, died in a New Year’s Eve arson fire.

“It’s like a death in the family,” said Executive Director Sean Walsh, a professional actor who has been with the center since 1985. “People were very sad. But we’ve been keeping on going.”

What has kept the center alive is its persevering organizers, who for the last six weeks have struggled to keep the operation together.

The regulars who came to a weekly Celtic dance class at the center have resumed the sessions at a West Los Angeles nightclub. Volunteers have spent weekends stuffing soot-covered books and costumes into storage boxes. Committees have been set up to find a home and to raise money to rent--and eventually buy--a new site.

Still others have been fighting a court battle with the center’s former landlord, who is demanding more than $12,000 in back rent that center officials say they cannot pay.

Over the weekend the center held its first fund-raisers with balladeer Robin Williamson and the center’s band of dancers, musicians and poets. For the time being, the future of the Celtic Arts Center--sandwiched between Thai restaurants and Armenian shops--is as mysterious as the fire.

The blaze started shortly after sundown Dec. 31, when someone set fire to portions of the 68-seat theater and the adjacent Cafe Beckett, causing more than $25,000 in damage, Walsh and Los Angeles city fire officials said.

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The arsonist left behind the charred remains of a large tricolor Irish flag that, Walsh says, was lifted from a box and torched in a loft office above the stage.

“Maybe our existence is a threat to someone,” he said, speculating that his group may have been targeted because it promotes Ireland’s native Gaelic roots rather than the British culture that dominates the island state. “It’s obvious that someone didn’t like us--either the center or the Irish.”

Center organizers point out that although the Irish are not considered an ethnic minority group in this country, back home Irish nationalists, led by the Irish Republican Army, have waged an armed struggle against British occupation since the 19th Century. Ireland’s 26 southern counties, now known as the Republic of Ireland, became independent from the British in 1922, but the six northern counties are still under British rule. “A lot of people feel very threatened when an alternative culture is promoted,” said Brian Oheachtuigheirn, who founded the Celtic Arts Center and its predecessor in New York 20 years ago. “Culture gives one a sense of identity, and that sense of identity would inspire one to participate in some sort of Irish politics, rather than English politics. But the English government identifies (Irish) culture with antagonistic Irish politics.”

Oheachtuigheirn and Walsh say the center is a cultural organization, not a political one. And they are careful not to accuse any specific British groups of starting the blaze.

But, they said, political rivalries that originate on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean remain alive in Los Angeles, where Irish and British nationalist groups thrive. When another local Irish group organized a fund-raiser for the IRA two years ago, Walsh said, bomb threats forced organizers to cancel the event.

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The Celtic center’s leaders acknowledged that the organization also may be plagued by disgruntled members.

The arsonist, who appears to have entered the building through a locked front door, may have had a key, Walsh and Oheachtuigheirn said. It is possible that a disenchanted member, or former member, could have started the fire, they said, although they did not specify who or why.

The Los Angeles Fire Department’s arson investigators are looking into the blaze and will not comment on its cause until their investigation is completed, said department spokesman Capt. Steve Ruda.

Resuscitating the Celtic Arts Center--now without a home and thousands of dollars in the red--will be no small feat. Its organizers concede that the boxes of books, costumes and precious things collected over the years may never be liberated from the dingy storage space where they are now locked up.

“I am still hopeful, but if it doesn’t work out, it will be a very sad passing,” Walsh said. “We’ll have a funeral, I guess.”