HATS OFF to anyone opting for a career in performance, for whom life can be a challenge whether times are good or bad. So every assistance in funding training is welcome – and there isn't enough of it about, writes DEIRDRE FALVEY
The Gaiety Theatre this week announced the recipients of its annual bursary awards, a scheme it started a few years ago after the gorgeous Victorian theatre had a major refurbishment. Four students, two each of acting and music at the Gaiety School of Acting and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, each received €2,500 towards their studies from Gaiety MD John Costigan. Both Gaiety School director Patrick Sutton and RIAM director John O’Conor, along with some of their colleagues, were there to congratulate first-year acting students Lorna Larkin (Galway) and Angel Hannigan (Donegal), and soprano and music teaching and performance student Marcella Walsh (Belfast) and Silvan Negrutiu (Romania), who plans a doctorate.
Costigan also announced the theatre's autumn/winter season, an eclectic mix including a short concert run by Chris de Burgh and singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne, the Irish premiere of Chicago, and two Bill Kenwright productions, of Cabaret, and (by special arrangement with Agatha Christie Ltd), Spider's Web.
One of the two expected Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival shows at the Gaiety (the full programme will be announced at the end of July) will be the British production (National Theatre and Live Theatre, Newcastle), The Pitmen Paintersby Lee Hall, the writer of Billy Elliot. And Opera Ireland's autumn season looks somewhat scaled back, with just one full opera production this autumn, Verdi's Macbeth, and two concert performances of Wagner's Das Rheingold. In the spring, Opera Ireland has a similar line-up, with a full production of Gounod's Romeo et Julietteand concert performances of I Capuleti e I Montecchi.
Sutton, who is directing one of this year's graduate productions at the Gaiety School of Acting, points out that over the past 19 years the theatre school has commissioned 30 new plays. This year, Lisa Tierney Keogh from Dublin (daughter of actor and playwright Garrett Keogh) and Lally Katz from Australia have written The Fire Roomand The Hunter Returns, which open in Project upstairs on June 16th. And, while the Cork Institute of Technology has had to abandon its advertised theatre degree (which was a CAO option this year), plans for a degree course operated by both DCU and the Gaiety School of Acting have also fallen apart; but the Gaiety School, which now boasts the additional title National Theatre School of Ireland, plans to go it alone with a theatre degree at its base in Smock Alley. While details aren't signed off, the degree course is due to start in autumn 2010.
John O’Conor was also in fine fettle at the Gaiety event, and afterwards headed to the launch of the New Ross Piano Festival. The festival isn’t till September, but there was a lovely vibe with what seemed to be almost the entire population of New Ross in the unusual confines of Freemason’s Hall on Molesworth Street in Dublin, with comments flowing back and forth between speakers and audience, as Pat Murphy (former Arts Council chairman and New Ross son), and festival director Connie Tantrum, spoke.
It was also a sort of generation game for Irish pianists. As well as O’Conor, and the charming and gracious Finghin Collins, artistic director of the festival and now living near New Ross. Hugh Tinney, Therese Fahy, Peter Tuite and the young Sophie Cashell (BBC Classical Star winner) were also there – and, pianists aside, British cellist Natalie Clein, perhaps checking out the venue for her second concert in the KBC Music in Great Irish Houses festival.
Both Collins and Tinney played on a piano in the inner sanctum of the Freemasons, surrounded by amazing regalia and displays, Collins going straight into some Schumann before even speaking, and Cashell winding it all up with Philip Martin’s Variation on Irish Airs. They were nicely contrasting choices, and the programme for the festival, organised by a voluntary committee, ranges from Bach to Schnittke, with some ragtime in downtown venues, and a terrific line-up of performers including Sunwook Kim, Roberto Prosseda, Antti Siirala, and Callino Quartet – as well as Cashell and Collins. The fourth New Ross Piano Festival runs from September 24th to 27th, in St Mary’s Church. newrosspianofestival.com.
In the splendidState Apartments of Dublin Castle, the Irish Arts Reviewcelebrated 25 years on Tuesday. The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Martin Cullen, was to do the honours, and dropped by early for a photocall, but had to leave, to attend what publisher John Mulcahy referred to as business in that other house (the Government was under fire, again, in the circus that passes for public life). In the event, Mulcahy did a fine, amusing job of telling the assembled 200 guests what the Minister had planned to say, and announcing the digitisation of the journal's archive. (See John Mulcahy interview in the Magazine).
Sounds like a good time for Dublin writer John Austin Connolly, who has been shortlisted in the RTÉ Radio 1 Francis MacManus Short Story Award (as he was last year) and this week won the top €3,000 RTÉ Radio 1 Drama Award for his play Dylan, Thomasina and Me. Connolly, who is retired and writes full-time, won the Yale Drama Series Award in 2007. Runner-up (€2,000) was Shay Healy, the singer, songwriter and author (and 1980 Eurovision songwriter with What's Another Year). Second runner-up (€1,000) is Ashley Taggart for Happy Hour. Born in Belfast and living in Dublin since 1999, Taggart has published short stories and has had several short films produced.
As well as the prize money, the winning plays are produced and broadcast by RTÉ radio. There were more than 500 entries for the 29th year of the awards, which honour the late PJ O’Connor, the station’s former head of drama. This year’s judges were writer Eugene McCabe, actor and director Bairbre Ni Chaoimh and Jesper Bergmann, chief dramaturge at the Royal National Theatre, Copenhagen. rte.ie/radio1/pjoconnorawards
- What sounds like a really exciting bunch of summer writing courses for younger people is coming up at Fighting Words, the impressive creative writing centre established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love in Dublin 1. The courses are on writing the graphic novel (from July 13th, 14-17 years); photography/narrative writing (from July 20th, 9-11 years); mobile director (filmscript writing and filming on mobiles, from July 27th, 14-17 years); Playwriting/performance (from August 3rd for 7-10 years, and from August 10th for 14-17 years); graphic novel (from August 17th, 11-13 year olds). The four-day (10am-3pm) courses are all free, requiring only parental/guardian permission, but places are strictly limited. bookings@fightingwords.ie or 01-8944576. fightingwords.ie
- Friday is the deadline for applications for the Shinnors Scholarship MA in Curatorial Studies in Limerick, a scholarship (with €10,000 a year stipend) for a two-year MA at Limerick School of Art and Design, based mainly at, and funded by, the Limerick City Gallery of Art. limerickcitygallery.ie/Education/ShinnorsFellowship