When, back in 1996, Michael D. Higgins, then Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, made the decision to channel over £3 million of EU structural funds into a necklace of three major new civic theatres around Dublin's city centre, one could only speculate on the effect this would have on the industry. Other than an Arts Council survey of 1994, there seemed to be little audience research, beyond the marketing strategy documents which went in with the applications.
But the first one out of the traps, the new Civic Theatre in Tallaght, rather concentrates the mind. Its lavish state-of-the-art provisions, with its spacious foyer, restaurant and bar - and its location in the burgeoning new Tallaght town centre - looks set to transform radically the theatrical playing pitch in Dublin, just as the suburban multiplexes did with cinema. Apart from creating new audiences, Tallaght's new 320-seater is a boon for independent companies, both from Dublin and the regions. For the first time, they have a commercially viable venue into which to expand. Up to this, the lack of a quality, affordable, mid-sized 250-400 seater in Dublin has produced a critical limit to their activities, which has often seemed a shocking waste of world class material - as well as for Dublin audiences, who rarely enough get to see Druid, before they routinely romp off to the UK.
The situation will be even more complex in over a year's time, when the two other civic theatres are set to come on-stream, about the same time as Project's glittering new 250-seater in Temple Bar. The Dun Laoghaire development is now on-site, a 450-seater as part of a larger development complex, although the theatre itself is still at plan-trimming stage. The Blanchardstown theatre is more complex, in that it is part of an ambitious multi-media arts centre, but that will be another 250-seater with an 80-seat studio space. The digging has only just begun.
My initial reservations about these venues resurfaced when I began to enquire into the Tallaght theatre. Such as, who is going to provide revenue funding? This is a question South Dublin County Council (SDCC) cannot yet clearly answer. And although they have kept the Arts Council informed of developments, no negotiations have yet been entered into about revenue, or even capital grants.
The initial cost estimate of £1.9 million also soared way over budget, to £3 million. Administrative Officer, Billy Coman, explained that this was due to "the escalation in construction costs. We were pretty shocked when the tenders came in, so we pared back our plans, hopefully without effecting the fabric and structure. One thing we stuck with was the fly-tower in the theatre, that was very important to us.
Anxious that delays might endanger the original £1.1 million EU funding, Coman and his superior, Philip Murphy, determinedly pushed the project through. They set up an independent company, limited by guarantee, to run the theatre, with a board including themselves, local councillors, Tallaght Square manager, Eamonn Furlong, and representatives of the local arts groups, Arts Forum, Alternative Entertainments and Cyclorama, which will find their own uses for the building - and indeed their own place in the programme of either the main space or the 80-seater studio space, The Loose End.
For the moment, SDCC is happy enough to absorb the construction costs, as well as operating losses for the first two years. But now that the theatre is actually there, Coman is confident of being able to haul in corporate support, as well as perhaps some grant-aid, once they have found a balance and identity in their programme.
There is a certain sense of alarming haste to the whole thing. The completion of the building is five or six weeks ahead of schedule. Add to that the fact that its new director, Brid Dukes, was hired last October, giving her only a five month run-in to pencil together a pretty intriguing schedule over the next year - although many of the hard-and-fast deals have yet to be struck.
But reservations began to drop away when Brid Dukes gave me a run-around tour of the venue last week: the engine rooms for heating and air-conditioning; the spacious kitchens and bar, the box office, with its new computer system scarcely out of its boxes; the green room; The Loose End, a schoolroom-sized studio with its high corner window onto the Dublin mountains.
There were a few hiccups (someone had painted the gallery walls lime green), but my pulse began to quicken when I saw the two huge dressing rooms, and, above all, the main space: its steeply raked, electronically controlled, retractable seating; its well distributed power points, the bones of its lighting rig, the acoustically treated walls, the control room, and the generous stage area itself. Communicating to the outside world through a scene dock you could literally drive a lorry through, its fly-tower soared up 60 feet to the ceiling - the only mid-scale theatre in the country with such a facility.
Eddie Conroy, the architect says: "The problem was, we had no model to work from, because all the recently fitted theatres in the country have been adapted from existing buildings. Even in the UK, the last purpose-built theatre to be built from scratch was the West Yorkshire Playhouse in the late 1970s."
Apart from travelling to various venues, Conroy and his team relied heavily on the expertise of their consultant from the Abbey, Maurice Power. "He advised us throughout every stage in the process, not just on the practicalities, but also on the ethos and vibe of the space.
"The Loose End is more flexible again, with quite a low roof grid. It's designed for studio theatre or even dance, and it's acoustically shielded from the other theatre. Another aspect is that the size and floor pattern is exactly that of the stage area downstairs, so it can be used for rehearsal or for mocking up sets".
He seems pleased: "The original plans were a lot more elaborate and exuberant, but I think we've got it down to a very lean machine."
Meanwhile, the theatrical clients Dukes has pencilled into the programme gives an impressive range - from the Abbey's Love in the Title by Hugh Leonard and theatre companies like Rough Magic, Red Kettle, Barabbas, Fishamble and the Corn Exchange to dance companies like John Scott's and even Opera Theatre Company's Four-Note Opera.
The Dublin Theatre Festival will also be renting the place for their fortnight in October. Fergus Linehan of the Festival says: "It certainly signals an end to mean little foyers, there's such a generosity of space about the building, with all the other aspects like free car parking. Definitely, a state-of-the-art 300-seater like this is a dream to programme into."
Although Dukes will be hiring out the venue to the bigger fish, she is looking at providing guarantees to some of the smaller companies, and indeed the Festival Fringe, whose venues and audiences have so far clustered around the city centre. This will provide an interesting programming opportunity for its director, Ali Curran. "Normally, our city centre audiences have a kind of `drive-by' attitude, so we're going to have to programme something special to draw the audiences out to Tallaght. Perhaps some straight drama, something Irish referenced, or something international."
All the independent companies I spoke to uniformly welcomed the theatre, and vouched for the energy and savvy of Brid Dukes - and she made no enemies by inviting many of them out to look at the space as it was being built. However, at the time, neither Dukes nor the companies - who are now chewing over the announcements of their Arts Council grants - could make firm and final commitments.
Most significantly, Rough Magic, who are opening their new version of Sheridan's "unfinished" play, The Whisperers ("finished" by Liz Cuti) in Limerick (as a co-production with the Bell Table) will be playing no other Dublin venue than the new Civic Theatre. According to Artistic director Lynne Parker, it is the only theatre in the greater Dublin area that makes financial sense for them.
The theatre opens up many imponderable questions in terms of its potential audience, but there are clear grounds for optimism. Within the remit of SDCC, there is a catchment population of 220,000 - from the solid old audiences of Rathfarnham and Terenure, to Rathcoole, Brittas, Clondalkin, Tallaght and even beyond, to Blessington and greater Wicklow.
Although the theatre has yet to achieve its identity, Brid Dukes is putting a very interesting stamp on the place with her inaugural show, Howie the Rookie, a new play by Tallaght boy, Mark O'Rowe. Coming in on the back of glowing reviews after its run at the little Bush Theatre in London, it will introduce a very welcome, gritty, local realism. Let the anarchy begin.
