For Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, festivals have become the thing, along with importing key directors and lead actors to strengthen the Pittsburgh professional pool.

Two years ago, PICT artistic director Andrew Paul's bold programming resulted in a Beckett Fest of 19 Samuel Beckett plays as the centerpiece of that season. Last year, he dreamed up a "Price of Empire" package, which juxtaposed "Julius Caesar" and "Stuff Happens," plus the intriguing "Nine Parts of Desire."

Paul will try to top that for 2008 by upping the ante, staging not one festival within the season, but two -- one, an unprecedented treat for theater aficionados, the other a more popular package that promises risk of its own -- and topping that off with a recent play by a young Irish writer and perhaps the greatest tragedy ever written.

As Paul points out, it's an all-Irish program, except for Shakespeare -- "and I think Shakespeare must be part Irish, too."

The grander mini-festival is SyngeCycle (July 17-Aug. 17), in which PICT will stage the complete works of the great Irish playwright John Millington Synge (1871-1909), who helped create the Irish literary revival. It is unprecedented because, when Galway's Druid Theatre did Synge's complete works in 2005-06, receiving international acclaim on tours to New York and elsewhere, it did just six plays, omitting Synge's first, "When the Moon Has Set." But PICT will do all seven.

The centerpiece of SyngeCycle will be the darkly comic masterpiece, "The Playboy of the Western World," running for a month in the smaller theater at the Stephen Foster Memorial. The other six Synge plays will be staged in pairs in the larger theater. An ensemble of 16 actors (eight men, eight women) will do all seven plays, some performing in as many as four.

The other mini-festival, Wilde Affairs, will feature Oscar Wilde's decadently beautiful study in obsession, "Salome" (June 12-28), conceived by English theater iconoclast Steven Berkoff and to be directed here by Dublin's Alan Stanford.

Stanford, who was Pozzo in the Gate Theatre of Dublin's "Waiting for Godot" that played here in 2006, also will do his one-man show, "In the Company of Oscar Wilde" (June 1). It's a good match: like Wilde, Stanford is 6 feet 5 inches tall.

The more conventional Wilde (if anything by Wilde is ever conventional) is the witty political melodrama, "An Ideal Husband" (May 8-31). As PICT did with "Stuff Happens" and "Julius Caesar," "Salome" and "Ideal Husband" will share the same acting company.

To round out Wilde Affairs, PICT will effect a collaboration with Pittsburgh International Children's Theatre (another PICT) to stage "Wilde Tales" (May 21-31), Bruce Dow's new musical version for families of two of Wilde's wonderful children's stories, "The Happy Prince" and "The Selfish Giant." What Paul calls a "chamber operetta," "Wilde Tales" will be part of the other PICT's 22nd International Children's Festival.

Those two festivals will be bookended by single plays. To start will be Shakespeare's great "King Lear" (April 9-26), directed by Philadelphia's James J. Christy, former longtime head of theater at Villanova. It will co-star the accomplished American classical actor, Dakin Matthews, as Lear, and the Canadian actor who has shined at PICT before, Simon Bradbury, as the Fool.

In a career that has hit many peaks but has not yet included Lear, Matthews has played Dick Cheney in the American premiere of "Stuff Happens," acted opposite Kevin Kline, Ethan Hawke and other stars in Lincoln Center's recent "Henry IV" (both parts, using Matthews' own edited version) and played Alfred Hitchcock in "Hitchcock Blonde." When he turned 65 he declared there were five roles he wanted to play before he died: he just achieved one, Big Daddy, in Dallas; Lear will make that two.

To close the season will be "Dublin Carol" (Dec. 3-20, 2008), an intense drama set in modern Ireland by Conor McPherson ("The Weir"), to be directed by Jackie Maxwell, head of Canada's Shaw Festival -- if the current negotiations for her services have their expected result. This would be her directing debut in the United States.

Paul will direct "Playboy" and "Ideal Husband." Other directors and actors will be announced later, but Paul is counting on including many of Pittsburgh's leading actors.

The 2008 subscription series will include six main shows, with "Wilde Tales" and "In the Company of Oscar Wilde" as extras. Paul says PICT's budget will remain at about $1.2 million. After a loss in 2005, the company had a small surplus in 2006 and hopes to do the same in 2007, if its final show, "Pride and Prejudice" (Dec. 6-22), draws well.

Because of the extra shows in SyngeCycle and increases across the board of 8 percent to 15 percent, subscription packages will run $180-$240, with single tickets $33-$47 ($17 students, $20 artists); "Wilde Tales," $25 subscribers, $30 others, $17 students; and SyngeCycle (excepting "Playboy"), $40 subscribers, $50 others.

For subscription packages, as of November, call Pro Arts, 412-394-3353. Single tickets will not be available until March 3.