Playwright Enda Walsh was in a strong position to utter challenging words for critics and theatres alike at last week's Evening Herald Theatre Awards. His play Bedbound, which premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF), won two awards (best actress: Norma Sheahan; best actor: Peter Gowen). Speaking to the Irish Times reporter, Patsy McGarry, he described the standard of theatre reviewing in Ireland as "absolutely atrocious, appalling", and also said that "theatres and organisations have got to wake up and produce work that will engage people". In the case of the specially commissioned Bedbound, the DTF has done just that.
After a three-week binge of theatre from the DTF and Dublin Fringe Festival - in which the DTF's sales were up by 30 per cent on last year, increasing from £250,000 to £400,000, while the Fringe increased its audiences by 25 per cent - it's clear that the appetite for theatre is enormous, and growing. The DTF pre-festival marketing was highly sophisticated, certainly, but in addition to tickets sold well in advance of the event (including via the website), the demand at the DTF box office during the festival was so high that many hopefuls couldn't be accommodated. Was this because of corporate block booking?
"That's not a big issue," says festival director Fergus Linehan. "Of course we need to watch it, but corporate seats account for only 57 per cent of all bookings. The fact is, we attracted a new wave of audience members, with a great on-the-day response from people who are new to the festival. We need to capture this momentum now, as the festival has extended beyond a niche and into the mainstream."
Perhaps it has become too mainstream, too packaged - even safe? Evidently audiences want to be engaged; whether they actually were is another question. Societas Raffaello Sanzio's production of Genesi genuinely divided audiences, with some abandoning it at the interval and others proclaiming its director, Romeo Castellucci, to be a genius, but (Hamlet and Small Poppies aside) the response to most of the other DTF shows was much more muted; many people commented that there simply weren't enough shows over the two weeks. There are no guarantees in a theatre festival, of course; while the festival programmers might have thought they could bank on work from previous DTF favourites such as Theatre de Complicite and Footsbarn, these shows (Light and The Inspector) were extremely disappointing, demonstrating that a theatre company is not a brand, with a quality guarantee, and each new play must be judged on its own merits.
This is why we need good critics (as Enda Walsh said) to debate the work, and a welcome innovation at this year's festival was the heavily attended Irish Theatre Magazine/DTF Critics' Forum which critiqued DTF and Fringe shows. The panel, chaired by ITM's Karen Fricker, included Joyce McMillan (Scotsman), Nelson Presley (Washington Post), Dutch theatre programmer Marcel Bogers, and Brian Singleton of TCD. A second forum on the closing weekend would have rounded it all off well. Here's to more debate next year . . .
Since its birth in 1986, Music Network has been energetically criss-crossing the country, exposing audiences in towns and villages to all kinds of musical forms, from Elizabethan consorts, to jazz and traditional sessions, to string quartets. Yesterday, its new Policy 2000 document was launched by the Minister for the Arts, Sile Ms de Valera, and Music Network's chief executive, John O'Kane, outlined the organisation's plans to supplement its main policy objectives. It aims to explore new models for local music development (including activity programmes in healthcare, education and professional development), and to advocate innovative partnerships across the public and private sectors.
Both the performance programme and information service are to be developed, the latter through a website (www. musicnetwork.ie) that will make the full contents of The Irish Music Handbook available online and include links to "every music organisation in the country which also has its own website".
Summer evenings, great windows open to the south: globe-trotting pianist Hugh Tinney (left) has been appointed artistic director of the classical festival-with-Palladian-mansions-attached: the Music Festival in Great Irish Houses. He succeeds the director of the National Concert Hall, Judith Woodworth, who had held the post since 1982. Tinney takes up his new responsibilities straightaway and is already planning for the 2001 programme.
In a complete turnaround for what has been a performer-driven festival, he says: "I'm looking at artists only after I've looked at repertoire." And he sounds unconcerned by the absence of a title sponsor, which prevented the running of the festival last June. He points out that the festival has been held before without a title sponsor. "My read," he says, "is that it's not a matter of the greatest urgency."
Belfast's Lyric Theatre has been nominated for The Empty Space/Peter Brook Award, presented by London Theatreviews and The Theatre Museum, London, to be announced on November 14th . . . Artist Augustine O'Donoghue, who works with video, photography and text, is the winner of the Victor Treacy Award, established by the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, in support of young artists. The award show continues until November 10th . . . Maria Moynihan has been appointed chief executive of the St Patrick's Festival, joining artistic director Dominic Campbell . . ."Making A Living From the Arts?", a one-day seminar aimed at improving the employability of artists throughout Europe, takes place at the DIT, Rathmines Road, Dublin, next Friday, November 3rd. Admission is free, by invitation only. Information and registration forms from Kathryn Byrne (tel: 01-260 3645; e-mail: kathryn@iol.ie).
