Mr Fergus Linehan will be the new director of the Dublin Theatre Festival, replacing Mr Tony O Dalaigh, who will retire from the post at the end of this year.
Mr Linehan (30) has been working with the festival since 1993 and is currently deputy director. A graduate of UCD in English and classics, he devoted much of his energy to Dramsoc during his years at college.
He is the son of the writer and former arts editor of The Irish Times, Fergus Linehan, and the actress Rosaleen Linehan. The family also includes the pianist, Conor, and the Irish Times writer, Hugh.
His theatre-loving parents took him to the Dublin Theatre Festival from the age of nine, he said yesterday, and he remembers the Moscow Art Theatre's visit as one of the factors which led him into a career in theatre.
He was working as general manager of the Tivoli Theatre when the post of general manager at the Dublin Theatre Festival came up. Mr O Dalaigh says Mr Linehan's youth and relative inexperience did not suggest him as a serious contender for the job, but he "swept the boards". "He just blew the whole gang away. He was so strong in so many ways."
He distinguished himself through his visual sense from the beginning, Mr O Dalaigh said, and he revamped the design of the festival's image. He had acted as "bad cop" to Mr O Dalaigh's "good cop" as they worked together on the festival, Mr O Dalaigh said. "He is a really tough negotiator with the foreign companies."
Their working relationship has been perceived in the Irish arts world as one of the most fruitful and creative. Mr O Dalaigh has handed more and more responsibility to the younger man in recent years, so that this year's programme, which will be announced next week, will already bear his stamp.
Speaking at a lunch in Mr O Dalaigh's honour yesterday, Mr Linehan said it was premature to celebrate Mr O Dalaigh's retirement. Ten years ago his retirement from the directorship of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham had merely marked the beginning of a new phase with the theatre festival.
Among the projects with which Mr O Dalaigh will be involved will be Draiocht, the new arts centre in Blanchardstown.
Mr Linehan said it was too early for him to speak about the direction in which he would like to take the theatre festival, except that he would like it to have a bigger impact on the city, and to be more accessible to more people. It was a wonderful time to take over, he said, as the new millennium dawned. The city was so "buzzy", and there was a new name sponsor, Eircom.
In addition, the festival has gained a high-profile chairwoman, Ms Moya Doherty, of Tyrone Productions, who replaces Ms Eithne Healy. Best known as the co-creator and producer of Riverdance, Ms Doherty trained as an actress at RADA and describes theatre as "my first love".