How do directors learn their trade? With difficulty, it seems. Six have been discussing the pitfalls at a symposium on theatre, reports Christine Madden

A young woman in the audience has a badge on her denim jacket. It declares: "Never apologise for your art." But it perches not on her lapel, like a carnation, nor on her sleeve, like a heart, but at the bottom of the jacket. You'd have to be perceptive, or looking for it, to discover it. It's an apt metaphor for one of the messages of the symposium the woman is attending. Entitled Seeking Direction and held by the Irish Student Drama Association, it indicates, among other things, that theatre direction is largely invisible - as are opportunities for training in its skills - but can be found if you are perceptive and looking for it.

The event has sprung from growing frustration at the lack of possibilities for education and development in direction. Little formal training is available in Ireland to learn its skills, and many feel theatre is ailing as a result. Helen Meany, one of the judges for the 2003 Irish Times ESB Irish Theatre Awards, says she and her colleagues felt strongly about the lack of training. "That was one conclusion that could be drawn from the overall weakness of a year of theatre. There are so many young people coming up but not with the same level of technical skills as the young actors. Director training in Ireland is traditionally done by trial and error, and there are simply fewer and fewer opportunities to do that in a safe environment." Kate McLaughlin, chair of the Irish Student Drama Association, says of organising the symposium: "We felt that a lot of students coming out of college would be interested in directing, and there just isn't any formal training for them."

Students are not the only ones who find the situation in need of repair; the expert members of the panel are also aware of the need for action. Six professional directors are taking part: Jason Byrne of Loose Canon Theatre Company, Lynne Parker of Rough Magic, Gavin Quinn of Pan Pan and the independent directors Martin Drury, Patrick Mason and Rachel West. With the additional presence as chairman of Willie White of Project arts centre in Dublin, which is hosting the event, the full house gives the afternoon the air of a village meeting presided over by the community's elders.

It becomes clear that the six have followed different paths on their career journeys - a necessity, perhaps, in a milieu that offered little formal training and was going through great change. Even those with formal training, such as Mason, suggest they have meandered their way to their current states of expertise through choices born of necessity, interest and, sometimes, desperation.

What nobody can describe is a formula for studying direction. "You have to think of what the training is for," suggests Mason. "Is it vocational or purely about the art? Is it a personal development?" The idea finds resonance. "The question of training is very personal, very subjective," says Byrne. "People expect you can train to learn a trick, go to a school to learn rules or recipes. But it's ludicrous. You have to decide what it is you want to create. Your training should be an answer to that need."

Quinn is also sceptical about formal training. "People can do a four-year course at art school, but that doesn't make them an artist. The same applies to directing." They all stress the need for hands-on training: gathering the tools and experiences vital for direction is a kind of odyssey, the development of a lifetime, not a one-off acquisition to be pulled out when necessary, like a business card. "The notion that you are then trained is a deadly fallacy," says Byrne. "The idea of apprenticeship is very important." Finding a master to study and imitate, he suggests, is more helpful than formal training.

Mason illustrates this with an anecdote. In the 1970s, he says, "I went to Paris to see Peter Brook and spent two weeks sleeping on his doorstep." Brook eventually took him on as an observer. After two months he asked Mason what he wanted. Mason told him he wanted to work there, with him. "Why?" Because, Mason answered, he wanted to be a director. "Fine," said Brook. "Go off and direct."

This method worked well for Parker. When she left university, in the early 1980s, opportunities for emerging directors and actors were thin on the ground. She had no formal training, no "in", "so we had no choice but to do it ourselves", she explains. Her company, Rough Magic, is inaugurating Seeds 2, a continuation of its project to nurture new writers; this time it will include emerging directors, hoping to foster the type of apprenticeship that the panel advocates.

Not that its members find formal training of no value. As a student West visited Berlin to observe the work of the Berliner Schaubühne theatre. She ended up staying for several years, watching and learning on the job. "They had something I didn't have. They all possessed a certain language, a lingo that I didn't have, coming from Ireland. I wanted a training to use as a pillar stone."

Drury, too, feels formal training to be important. "I want to see the prospect of a vocational scaffolding," he says. Drawing from his experience in the arts, however, he implies that it would be better to get on with realising one's ambitions rather than wait around for institutional solutions.

"We live in a society that is sceptical about the arts anyway," he says. "The work of a director in invisible, not like music or actor training, which is highly visible and undeniable. The absence of formal training draws from a need to create a context of acknowledgment that directing, though invisible, is a discipline. I would like to see the prospect of a vocational scaffolding, but you get tired of beating your head against a wall."

A woman in the audience who is studying drama in the US mentions that working in a school environment gives developing directors a safe place to try things out, assisted by their professors, who are all professional directors. "I think the idea of a safe place after the foundation course is a great idea," says West. "It would eventually raise the standard of theatre."

But the prospect harbours pitfalls. "If there is a school of directing, what happens when every year 30 directors come out and want to direct?" Mason adds: "I can't make a living directing in Ireland as a freelance director. Sorry to lower the tone of the conversation."

West points again to her time in Berlin. "It is the responsibility of directors in this country to go abroad," she says, to gather experience of directorial skills and methods and bring it back.

White sums up: "If you want to direct, direct. Figure out what you want to do and collect the tools and experience. Ryanair.com can be a great resource."

ISDA Festival 2004

The Irish Student Drama Association's annual theatre festival returns to Galway, its birthplace, on Sunday. Running for almost 60 years, it offers drama groups from third-level colleges the opportunity to perform. This year's audiences can choose from 24 productions at four venues over seven days, culminating in an awards ceremony on March 12th. "The festival is a great platform for student drama: it gets a lot of exposure," says SiobháNí Ghallchóir of the association. "It helps to establish them. I really hope these students get the attention they deserve." Tickets to the shows, which range from original plays such as The Cigarette Breaks, by Brian Whelan and Shane McDermott, to established pieces such as The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler, cost 7 (concessions 5). You can get more details from the festival's website, http://dramsoc.nuigalway.ie/isda04.