In a year when the Dublin Theatre Festival celebrated half a century of an eclectic theatrical past, the good news from the judges of The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards is that there is plenty more to come, writes Fiona McCann.
"The thing that struck me was there is a real strength now coming through in young directors. There seems to be a bit of a shift happening, with the experienced older generation making way for a young new crop of directors, and we're beginning to see the fruits of that very clearly," says Madeline Boughton, who is joined on the judging panel this year by John Fairleigh and Dr Christopher Fitz-Simon.
Fairleigh adds that this sense of a new generation of dramatic talent is also notable among the actors they witnessed over the course of 2007. "There's a very energetic, exciting generation of actors coming through in the 25 to 30 age group," he says.
According to Dr Fitz-Simon, the youth and energy of those on the stage is being matched by those in the seats before them. "There is an audience coming in to see them of that generation too, so the house is full. If, in my generation, I had been putting on a play with a group of people [ of my age], there might have been three people in the audience," he says. "Now a group in their twenties put on a play they think is worth doing, that they think they can do well, and the audience that they attract is of the same age group, and is thinking the same thing."
The proliferation of acting talent is allowing directors to take on ambitious productions with larger casts, a trend Boughton puts down to a new sense of self-assurance within the industry. "There's a confidence around being able to cast bigger pieces, not just in the main houses but in other companies as well, that's very encouraging to see," she says.
Theatre is in good shape countrywide, with quality productions all around the country and a surge in the number of touring productions. "What people are able to see on stage in Tralee or wherever is of a quality that you wouldn't have expected and certainly wouldn't have seen five or 10 years ago," says Dr Fitz-Simon.
What is also encouraging, according to the judges, who saw almost 400 plays between them over the course of the year, is that the actors are being afforded plenty of new material to work with. "So many plays we were discussing had such explosive energy. They were speaking to new audiences and they were looking at society, with very compassionate, sensitive writing," says Fairleigh. "You feel that when that is nurtured and developed and tamed into theatrical form, it could become another generation just about to explode."
But Fairleigh emphasises the need for such new work to be encouraged. "There's something fundamentally wrong with the theatre scene if writers consistently or very often feel that Ireland is not the best place to work on the creative process of a first production. I think there's too much of a pattern over the past few years of Irish writers being nurtured elsewhere," he says.
These new writers are showing a tendency to explore dark subjects in their work, according to Boughton. "They're not the most uplifting pieces," she points out, adding that many of them are "very much about contemporary society, urban society". For Dr Fitz-Simon, the thematic shift from rural settings to urban landscapes has been a marked and interesting development in new, emerging work. "It used to be about depopulation and old men dying on the tops of mountains and things like that, and now it's gone into the urban subculture," he says. "It is very depressing to experience it coming at you from the stage, but in another way it's quite uplifting to see it exposed so very vibrantly."
In terms of production standards, the judges feel that an increase in the funding of theatre is paying visible dividends. "The increased investment by the Arts Council is manifesting itself in the quality of productions we're seeing," says Boughton. Not all audiences are being well served, however. "I was disappointed this year with the quality of the opera productions," says Boughton.
The judges complain about the number of cancelled shows, particularly matinees, often at the last minute. "It comes back to the responsibility of the venue," says Boughton. "There are audiences out there for matinees and it just requires a commitment to them." The importance of venue managers is emphasised, with many of them being held responsible for poor turnouts at some shows that the judges feel were particularly deserving of promotion. But tribute is paid to others involved in the management of smaller venues around the country. "It's a shame we don't have an award for theatre managers," says Fairleigh.
With new and old spaces visited over the year, and venues that included Dublin's Italian Quarter and a naval base on Haulbowline Island, 2007 has left the judges optimistic about the direction and future of Irish theatre, and they pay tribute not only to the quality of the productions they saw, but to the variety of form and tone encountered, with some of the darker subjects offset by lighter, more upbeat works. "You come to the theatre with a kind of sniffy prejudice about what is good theatre, but sometimes by going to shows which are unashamedly farce, mad and entertainingly fun, you have to adjust your thoughts about what theatre is, and if farce is done well it's gloriously funny," says Fairleigh.
For Dr Fitz-Simon, the variety on show on Irish stages is proof of a thriving scene. "It demonstrates that there are horses for courses, and we have a lot of horses and courses here all running at the same time, which I think is great."
Madeline Boughtonhas worked with a range of arts organisations, including the Abbey and Peacock theatres, Project Arts Centre, Dublin Theatre Festival and Dance Council of Ireland. She was a board member and former joint artistic director of Dublin Youth Theatre and chairperson of Pan Pan Theatre Company.
John Fairleighis honorary director of the Stewart Parker Trust for the encouragement of new playwrights in Ireland, and honorary director of the Ireland Romania Cultural Foundation. He is editor of two Methuen anthologies of Irish plays and a former member of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Dr Christopher Fitz-Simonwas artistic director of the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, the Irish Theatre Company, and the National Theatre (Abbey and Peacock). For over 12 years he worked in RTÉ as a TV drama director. He is author of many broadcast plays as well as a biography of Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards.