Discovering new writers has been the 'most inspiring thing' for the Fishamble Theatre Company which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, writes SARA KEATING.
THERE IS AN oft-quoted saying that the natural life-span for a theatre company is no more than five years. Jim Culleton responds to the cynical adage that I playfully throw at him with earnest defence. Fishamble Theatre Company, which he nurtured from small beginnings as the Pigsback cooperative in the late 1980s, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and its continuing success and rocketing international profile easily defeats such criticism. As Fishamble's artistic director for the last 16 years, Culleton has seen the "new play company" that he presides over grow from assured achievement on a national level to a global brand with international theatrical presence.
"Our anniversary is something to celebrate," Culleton insists, "but not merely because we've lasted for 20 years. The real achievement is what we've done in those 20 years; what we've contributed to the development of new Irish work. And that we still continue to be pertinent and provocative; that we continue to engage with theatre and artists in a way that pushes the boundaries of Irish theatre; that's the achievement.
"I remember hearing the British director Michael Bogdanov giving a talk when I was a student," Culleton continues. "He put the theatre company life-span conundrum more reasonably, suggesting that companies go through cycles of change every eight years. When I reflect back upon Fishamble's development I can relate to that. After the first eight years, there was a natural progression from Pigsback to Fishamble, when we began to really focus our energy on the Fishamble Firsts scheme: developing work by people who had never written for the stage.
"It was after another eight years that we started playing around with our short play schemes. And we are at a real peak at the moment - with recognition for three of our new plays last year at the Irish TimesTheatre Awards, the celebration of Whereabouts at the 2006 awards, and now our international tours. But who knows in another four years we may have a new cycle again."
If this sounds like self-congratulation, nothing could be farther from the truth, as Culleton constantly deflects Fishamble's achievements to the writers that the company have worked with over the last 20 years. "The most inspiring thing for us," he says modestly, "has been discovering writers whom nobody has ever heard of before, like Mark O'Rowe, whose first play, From Both Hips, came through to us as an unsolicited script. Discovering writers who have something new to say about a part of Irish life that hasn't been looked at before is brilliant.
"We're an Irish company based in Dublin and our main responsibility is to that audience, to reflect contemporary experience to them. Sean McLoughlin's play, Noah and the Tower Flower, which we staged in Ballymun, is a really great recent example. Many of the audience that came to see it had never been in the theatre and they didn't know what to expect, but they brought an amazing energy to it by their response and they saw it as a real reflection of their lives. But at the same time, it was rewarded as a great play when it won best new play at the Irish TimesTheatre Awards this year." (The play has also just been awarded the Stewart Parker Award.)
GAVIN KOSTICK, who oversees the literary duties for Fishamble and who has written five plays for the company over the last 20 years, agrees that new writing has been the most vital aspect of Fishamble's vision. "When I first met Jim," he reminisces, "it was just after Pigsback's first production: a production of Christopher Hampton's Savages. It was a terrible, terrible play, and I said to him, 'why are you doing plays like that? I could do better. If I write a play for you, will you promise to put it on?' Jim said, "well, I promise to give it a reading.' That play became The Ashfire, which was a great success, and I've been involved with the company since.
"Then there were new plays by emerging writers like Michael West, Marina Carr, Deirdre Hines, and that sort of pushed the company more and more towards new writing until eventually it became our thing, and we became the 'new play company', commissioning work by established writers like Dermot Bolger and Sebastian Barry, and discovering first-time writers too." Kostick eagerly expounds upon the nature of the dialogue that Fishamble's work has had with Irish society and Irish theatre over the last 20 since its inception.
"Over the years, we have produced all sorts of plays," he says, "and we're very relaxed about playwriting as a form, producing writer-led pieces as well as the group projects we've done. But we've become more and more specific over the years in terms of what the plays speak to and most of our plays deal with contemporary Ireland and modern Irish life. It is important to us that the work is engaging with life as it is being lived here and now, whether that's in a Dublin suburb or a midlands town or a fictional abstract dystopia."
In terms of contemporary Irish theatre, meanwhile, Kostick explains that Fishamble's responsibility to emerging writers has considerably strengthened the pool of talent from which other companies can also draw new writers from. "We get hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts a year, never mind the commissioned scripts, but despite being a new play company we can't produce even a fraction of that work. We can only put on two productions a year. As Fishamble began to develop, this state of affairs became very frustrating, so we began to look at other ways of working with developing writers, through our playwriting courses and with initiatives like our Fringe Festival Award for New Writing, and our short play projects."
AS CULLETON elucidates, "the short play schemes like the Y2K Festival (2000), the Shorts (2004), and Whereabouts (2006) are incredibly important because they allow emerging writers to be part of the company and a greater conceptual project, even if only briefly, and it allows us to work with many more writers and artists than we otherwise could."
These theatrical tasters also work for audiences, allowing a bite-sized exploration of various themes and theatrical forms in a single condensed theatrical experience.
Kostick remembers the success of Whereabouts particularly fondly. "The surprise for the audience - and the unsuspecting public - was brilliant. We were staging eight different plays across different locations in Temple Bar, and in one of the plays, I had to drive a getaway car and stage an abduction. We had 48 calls to the police over the four nights that the project ran, so we were obviously seen by a wider audience despite having totally sold out the show."
Such large scale projects are a far cry from the "shabby ramshackle days of production in the old Project Arts Centre", as Kostick describes them, but the public response to projects like Whereabouts or their ongoing tour of Pat Kinevane's remarkable play about elderly people, Forgotten, suggests that, despite growth and success, Fishamble have in fact not lost their edge.
Culleton is happy with the "stable, if modest, infrastructure, we have developed over the years. It has allowed us to expand in the breadth of our ambition and our capacity to achieve our goals."
"In fact it's a bit like a sporting career," Kostick jokes glibly, "you put in the work and you peak over time. Ah, you may lose a little bit of character along the way, but you've gained in your capacity to produce and perform."
And as the buoyant pair head off on a national and international tour with last year's celebrated productions, you really can't argue with that.
The Pride of Parnell Street is at the Belltable, Limerick, May 26-31; Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, June 3-7. International performances include Paris, New Haven and Wiesbaden.Forgotten is on tour to Prague, May 25- June 1, and Edinburgh, Aug 20-23.
