Will Mickey Berra shoot the basketball in the hoop while President Mary McAleese looks on admiringly while sipping a Scotch?
What is all this? Well, it is a roundabout way of writing about the Irish cultural invasion of Washington next week when "Island: Arts From Ireland" opens with a gala night in the Kennedy Center in the presence of President McAleese and a distinguished invited audience. President Clinton may also show up.
Hovering backstage to ensure there are no catastrophes will be the Director of Productions, Italian-American Mickey Berra, who has been staging shows at the centre almost since it opened back in 1971. This is some record considering that the centre puts on 3,500 performances of music, theatre, dance and film every year.
When Covent Garden in London was closed for renovations, the company insisted on coming to the Kennedy Center for the world premiere of The Sleeping Beauty. It took 21 sea containers to bring the sets.
Princess Margaret, who attended the opening night, came backstage to meet the man who made it all possible and accepted a Scotch from Mickey Berra. Then, with the BBC cameras on him, Mickey tried his famous 30-yard basketball shot at the hoop he has rigged up in the backstage area for relaxation. It went in first time and the princess was charmed.
For The Irish Times, during a recent tour of the centre, Mickey hit the hoop but did not score. He has promised to do better for President McAleese whether she asks for Scotch or not.
The gala opening concert brings together leading Irish and American performers to celebrate 20th-century Irish and Irish-American music and dance. Donal Lunny, with the help of Philip King, will bring it all together in the Opera House. The Riverdance company, inevitably, will be part of an evening which will end with a fleadh on the roof terrace overlooking the Potomac river.
Film of President Kennedy's visit to Galway in 1963 will be interspersed through the night's entertainment. This, after all, is an Irish festival in the centre called after him and inspired by his sister, Jean, who accompanied him on that one and only visit as US President to Ireland.
Organising this festival has been keeping her busy since she returned to the US from Dublin, where she was ambassador for more than five years until September 1998. She was able to see at first-hand the exuberant arts scene flourishing in Ireland as a cultural counterpoint to the rampant materialism of the Celtic Tiger economy.
Northern Ireland arts will be represented by Stewart Parker's play, Pentecost, presented by Rough Magic, and through contributions from Seamus Heaney, Jennifer Johnston, Michael Longley, Davey Hammond and Tommy Makem.
The governments in Dublin and Belfast and various companies and donors are subsidising some of the expenses of mounting such an ambitious arts event, which may or may not end up making money.
The Kennedy Center lives precariously, in spite of the two million people who pay to see its productions each year. Mickey Berra explains that it costs $110 million annually to run the centre. Some $60 million comes from ticket sales and $10 million in federal funding for the maintenance of what is classed as a "national monument".
The remaining $40 million has to be raised by the board of trustees through intensive fund-raising drives, tapping into a network of wealthy philanthropists and enthusiasts for the arts.
President Eisenhower signed the legislation in 1958 setting up a National Cultural Center beside the Potomac on the site of what was a brewery and wasteland. Following President Kennedy's assassination, the still unbuilt centre was designated as the nation's memorial to the man who had called for "a New Frontier for American art".
Even without attending a performance, it is worth visiting the magnificent building, and more than three million visitors a year do so. Under one roof and spread over 17 acres are the concert hall, with 2,450 seats; the opera house, with 2,300 seats; the Eisenhower theatre, which seats 1,100; the smaller Terrace theatre, which was a gift from Japan; a more intimate Theatre Lab and the American Film Institute, which presents screen classics and holds film festivals and premieres.
It was in this 250-seat cinema that the actor, Ian McElhinney, presented The Green Shoot, his one-man show on the life of Ulster poet John Hewitt last week. He was a kind of precursor to the big stuff beginning next Saturday and running until May 28th.
Other events include the American premiere of Marina Carr's On Raftery's Hill, which will be playing simultaneously in Dublin and Washington, so Mickey Berra is having a duplicate set built. Another set is being built for Donal O'Kelly's Catalpa.
There is lots, lots more. The full programme is listed on the Web at http://kennedycenter.org/irishfestival.
The festival is also laying claim to the replica of the Famine-era vessel, the Jeanie Johnston, which should sail across the Atlantic and into Alexandria, downriver from the Kennedy Center, early in June. Originally it was hoped to incorporate it into the two weeks of the festival, but better late than never.
Word is that President Clinton has promised to walk the deck of the ship and reminisce about his Irish ancestors, some of whom might have travelled over on the original.