This year's Belfast Festival has been one of the most successful ever, but its future is in doubt, its artistic director tells Jane Coyle
It may be a condition born out of circumstance but, nevertheless, the 2007 Belfast Festival at Queen's is generally acknowledged to be leaner, meaner and in better physical shape than it has been for years. Out has gone the familiar fat, often flabby programme, bursting at the seams with predictable big names, tokenistic foreign imports, lantern processions and minor events in libraries, community centres and holes in hedges across the city.
Since he took up the post almost two years ago, director Graeme Farrow has been fighting battles on several fronts. Funding, of course, is the big one.
Last year Queen's University, the Festival's key partner since its earliest days, threatened to pull the plug on its financial backing, unless other funding bodies increased their support. Into the breech stepped the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure with a £150,000 (€215,200) one-off grant to ensure that the 2007 Festival would happen. Times are changing inside Queen's, too. The university has closed its department of culture and arts, of which the Festival was an integral part. This move is welcomed by Farrow.
"The restructuring will help," he says. "I've been one of those arguing for it, not least because it means that the Festival will now have its own dedicated team, rather than having to share staff with other organisations." The customers, however, have not given a jot about the Festival's internal difficulties, buying tickets in unprecedented numbers and precipitating more sell-out shows than ever before. Even before the terrific craic and musical flourish of the opening concert with the Chieftains, the Ulster Orchestra, Ulster Youth Choir and the Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band, almost one-third of all shows were sold out and more than £500,000 (€717,000) amassed in ticket sales.
Tickets for Replay's Macbeth in Crumlin Road Gaol were as rare as hen's teeth, with a waiting list of more than 1,000. Those lucky enough to secure one were treated to a true Festival experience as, on a succession of dark, chill Belfast nights, the star of the show was Lanyon's magnificently gloomy, architecturally ornate edifice, still haunted by the ghosts of child inmates, suffragettes, executed murderers and interned political activists and paramilitaries.
In delicious and complete contrast was another carefully sited piece, crafted by Cahoots NI in an enchanting, fairy-lit glade, deep among the trees of the Botanic Gardens. Audiences of just 15 at a time, most of them wide-eyed children, watched, mesmerised, as the tiny occupants of The Flea Pit - strong-flea Ivan, Isabella the high-wire artiste and fearless stunt-flea Roderigo - were put through their daring routines.
While other elements of the programme may have proved a much more difficult sell, Farrow has been encouraged by the fact that, at the end of the day, many of them clocked up respectable audience figures and positive critical responses. "Getting 1,300 people into the Grand Opera House to see a brand new festival production of a youth opera - The Tailor's Daughter by Brian Irvine - was very gratifying," he says. "Even better was the happiness of the young cast and orchestra players who participated. Belfast isn't a big city and audiences tend to go with what they know.
"We're trying to encourage a more risk-taking culture but this takes time and it's based on faith and trust. I wouldn't be bringing in expensive international work if I didn't believe it demanded to be seen. But there isn't much work of this nature in Belfast throughout the rest of the year, so it can feel as if you're dropping it on an unsuspecting audience at times." Venues, of course, play an important part in any festival experience. In contrast to the warm buzz of a big concert in the main auditorium of the Belfast Waterfront Hall, attended by the great and good of the city and beyond, a less mainstream event in the Waterfront Studio, for example, can leave audiences feeling a little isolated in a distant corner of the otherwise empty building.
A STRANGELY SUBDUED atmosphere hung over the Czech Republic production of Sclavi - The Song of an Emigrant, which portrayed the desperation of the emigrant experience with abstract beauty, resonance and passion, stripped of conventional narrative. Yet, as the final applause mounted, some members of the audience, drawn from the city's growing immigrant population, were unable to hold back their tears.
The Siobhan Davies Dance Company arrived on to the same stage, armed with its international reputation for innovative, ground-breaking work. But its new piece Two Quartets, a collaboration between a composer/musician, a visual artist and a fashion designer, offered a feast for the eye and the ear, but left hearts largely untouched.
"It's true that a number of things have been difficult to sell," Farrow admits. "Sclavi was hard, but we got there in the end through word of mouth. Contemporary dance is always tough up here. But overall, we've been lucky to have more sell-outs than we've had in aeons and reviews that have generally been very positive."
There was a packed house at the Lyric on Sunday afternoon for a reading by poets Tom Paulin and Michael Longley. The event was part of LyricFest, two days of rehearsed readings and discussions, involving many of the North's best-known actors and directors and marking the theatre's contribution to the cultural life of Belfast over the past 40 years. Rehearsed readings of Christina Reid's Tea in a China Cup, WB Yeats's Deirdre and a new play Goodnight Irene by Jennifer Johnston were cloaked in a palpable sense of nostalgia, as the Lyric prepares to vacate its site in readiness for an extensive rebuild. Proceedings were tinged with sadness, too, at the recent death of veteran actor Mark Mulholland, fondly remembered throughout the weekend.
By the middle of the second week, everybody was in the mood for the Rosie Kay Dance Company's A Wild Party. Where better to stage this cutting-edge piece of dance theatre than the Old Museum Arts Centre, a space which frequently goes out on a limb with its programming? Inspired by Joseph Mancure March's classic jazz age poem of the same title, this razzle-dazzle show is carefully crafted to appear casual and ad libbed. But Kay's own amazing choreography and dancing, coupled with the edgy live playing of the jazz trio, riskily captured those nights when the drink flows freely, love turns into rough sex and relationships grow dark.
People emerging from this wild partying could be overheard talking enthusiastically about what a smashing festival it has been. Highlights were being swapped - Paul Buchanan and The Blue Nile, The Tailor's Daughter, The Tiger Lillies, Ute Lemper, Truth in Translation, Sclavi - important shows that are the meat and drink of an event that aspires to international reckoning.
One venue that seems to guarantee a good time is the stained-glass, mirrored Spiegeltent, sited in Custom House Square beside the River Lagan. For the second year running, it has provided just the right ambience for cabaret, comedy, off-the-wall musical entertainment and the sell-out Glitter and Sparkle Halloween Ball. It was certainly the perfect setting for the Tiger Lillies, arguably the world's greatest cabaret band, whose deceptively sweet songs, beautifully enunciated in high falsetto voices, explore in gleeful detail a plethora of sleazy subjects that polite society would prefer not to think about.
And with South Africa very much the flavour of the month at present, Farrow proved himself to have his finger firmly on the contemporary pulse. Nobody present at the Lyric Theatre could fail to have been moved and inspired by the dignity and courage emanating from the real life stories, as told to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in Truth in Translation. Then came Johnny Boskak Is Feeling Funny, Greg Coetzee's virtuoso one-man narration of a journey across the dusty, danger-infested reaches of the country, in a dramatised melange of the themes of Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers and Paris Texas, all to the plaintive sounds of Syd Kitchen's steel-stringed acoustic guitar.
"My aspiration in 2007 has been to continue to restore the faith of audiences and stakeholders in the Festival and to ensure that people know that this is a unique event that is worth saving," reflects Farrow. "We've bounced back and are making what money we've got go an awful long way."
But what of the future? Is the unthinkable still a possibility? Might this, the 45th Belfast Festival at Queen's, be the last? "We've had very positive feedback and the public has demonstrated a growing appetite for what's been on offer. As to whether this affects our future security, I'd like to think it helps. A huge cut in our marketing budget has meant that the 2007 Festival has not had a visible presence - no billboards, no banners in the streets, virtually no advertising. And that's so important in reminding the public of our presence.
"I would maintain that there are very few cities of Belfast's size that host festivals of this quality. Artists from all over the world really want to come and play here, but I sometimes think Belfast doesn't realise what it has on its hands. This festival has been around for 45 years and it needs to be whipped into shape every now and again. This year, we've been on a healthy diet but we've also been working hard in the gym.
'FROM A BUSINESS point of view, I believe that we'll reach the stage where we have almost exhausted the local market and that audience expansion will be from outside of Northern Ireland. As visitors to Belfast increase, we should be able to contribute to growth in that area. But, ultimately, if you want a festival that's capable of attracting an international audience, you have to be prepared to pay for it."
The job of artistic director of this hardy, long-running, international event should be one of the best jobs in the the arts world. Is it? In reply, Farrow grins ruefully. "It's a hard job. Most of it is about politics and money rather than the culture itself. In the weeks ahead I'll probably look back on all the artists we've had through the door this year and think myself very, very lucky. "On the other hand, there is an all-too-real prospect that in a few weeks' time we'll be giving Belfast Festival at Queen's an honourable burial. We'll have to wait and see."
The Belfast Festival runs until Sunday. www.belfastfestival.com
