A New Life: From marketing executive to theatre manager, Lorna Siggins reports on a career change that really works
Fergal McGrath is probably more interested than most of his colleagues in the long-running action by fruit importers, Fyffes, against DCC over alleged insider dealing.
This is not because the managing director of Galway's Druid Theatre Company believes the court hearings have immediate dramatic potential - though clearly they do. It's because he knows some of the main players better than most, having worked with the company for seven years.
And he could be there still, for the agricultural science graduate admits to having been "dead happy" in that marketing executive's suit. His career trajectory in the multinational was on the rise. When he turned his back on it to become manager of the Galway Arts Festival, he recalls Carl McCann of Fyffes telling him that he might be making one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
Born and reared in Tuam, Co Galway, McGrath's father was a postmaster and part-time farmer - "so I was always out on the land". He took his Leaving Certificate at the Christian Brothers School and secured a place in the agricultural science degree course in University College Dublin (UCD). This involved one year at Mountbellew Agricultural College. When he graduated in 1985, he did the "milk round", was offered a post in Fyffes, then known as Fruit Importers of Ireland, and was given the choice of administration, sales or marketing.
"Marketing was the new buzz word, so I opted for that and was assigned as general manager of Uniplumo, the company's pot plant division in Swords, Co Dublin."
He remembers he didn't know what a pot plant was, but learned fast, and was also involved in developing sales in cut flowers.
"We were on the cusp of an explosion in both, due to the interest being shown by supermarkets. It was a cut-throat business and I dealt with some of the most "positively aggressive" sales and marketing people in my life - people who were obsessed with margins and turnover per square foot and getting that extra shelf of plants into that lorry."
Turnover at Uniplumo increased from €1.25 million to €5 million during his tenure, but he attributes this to "being there at the right time, rather than doing the right thing". During his free time, he had more than a passing interest in music and was hired by fellow Tuam "heads", the Saw Doctors, as a substitute drummer. "I replaced Padraig Stevens who was away for a year and was known as Pete Best - the drummer who got thrown out by The Beatles! I used to commute at weekends, and it was a bit manic for a while."
The interest extended to regular visits to the Galway Arts Festival - "first it was just a weekend, then I found myself making sure I took a week's holidays for it".
When the post of general manager was advertised in 1990 he recalls thinking, "I'd love to be able to do that job." He had some experience of event management during his time in UCD, and he also knew Ollie Jennings, arts festival founder and Saw Doctors manager, through selling tickets for fundraisers.
He didn't apply for the job, but the post came up again in 1992. "This time, I had the confidence, though I would have been regarded as a bit of an outsider in the Galway arts scene - a chancer from Tuam! I told them that they didn't need a creative or artistic person as they had that already, but they did need someone to manage, to handle sales, marketing and sponsorship."
There began a very successful 10-year relationship, with McGrath working under three successive artistic directors - Trish Forde, Ted Turton and Rose Parkinson. Turnover at the festival increased from €0.275m to €1.25m. "This wasn't my doing, as again I was part of a team at a very good time. Ollie Jennings had created something wonderful, Trish Forde was very expansionist.
"A good artistic director always wants to do more, better, and that costs money, so there is always a healthy tension between him or her and the manager," he explains. "I was very struck by a talk that Jerome Hynes gave on marketing at the Arts Council, where he said that the arts were not a business, but had to be managed as a business.
"I also remember there was one year, 1996, where we had no artistic director. Sales were great, we balanced our books, but the festival was slated. We were too clever. You need that creative element at the core."
Three years ago, he made another move, but not quite so dramatic. At this stage, he had different priorities - two young children with his wife, Anne, a researcher with Teagasc. "I suppose I felt 10 years with the festival was enough and it was better for it to have fresh blood, fresh ideas."
Before his last festival, he was appointed managing director of the Druid Theatre Company, working with Garry Hynes. His first day on the job was the opening night of John B Keane's Sive, some months after the playwright's death.
Since then, the award-winning company has staged two of Keane's plays, has toured with Christian O'Reilly's The Good Father, has sent Dawn French's My Brilliant Divorce to London's West End, and is preparing for the climax of two years' work on the plays of John Millington Synge. On July 16th, the Synge Cycle opens in Galway's Town Hall Theatre, when all six of the writer's plays are staged on the same day as part of this year's arts festival.
Looking back, McGrath acknowledges that there were influences that he may not have been aware of that influenced his career change. Playwright Tom Murphy was regarded as a God in his native Tuam when he was growing up, and Murphy's nephew was a best mate in school. "When I meet Tom today, he often calls people over to listen to my Tuam accent!
"When I think of it, I worked with growers and buyers in Fyffes, and now I am working with artists who produce or 'grow' work and directors who purchase it. I'm in there between the two, promoting it."
Could he see himself making another switch? McGrath hedges his bets. "I am a firm believer in fate, and in intuition, and if something does happen, it will be for a very, very good reason. I also think the day you stop learning in a job is the day you need to move."
The Synge Cycle of six plays will be staged at Galway's Town Hall Theatre on July 16th and 23rd, and as a series of double bills over the Galway Arts Festival fortnight from July 11th. The project moves to the Olympia Theatre in Dublin on August 2nd and to the Edinburgh International Festival on August 27th.