Vincent Gerard Dowling (7 September 1929 – 9 May 2013)[1] was an Irish actor and director.
[citation needed] Dowling emigrated to the United States and was artistic and producing director of The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (GLSF) in Cleveland, Ohio from 1976 to 1984,[2] where he directed, produced and acted in many classical works, by Shakespeare and others.
[2] [3] Dowling received an Ohio Valley local Emmy for the 1983 PBS broadcast of his 1982 GLSF production of The Playboy of the Western World.
[6] Politician Richard Boyd Barrett is the biological son of Dowling and recording artist and actress Sinéad Cusack from a 1966 relationship while both were at the Abbey Theatre; Boyd Barrett was adopted as an infant.
Dowling contacted Boyd Barrett after his connection with Cusack was publicly revealed in 2007.