All is not well in the theatre world down Limerick way, writes Belinda McKeown. Having regarded the Belltable Arts Centre in Limerick as its performance home for the past 15 years, the Island Theatre Company has had a vested interest in the question of whether the centre can afford to remain at its 257-seat venue beyond the end of next year.
Belltable is facing a combination of funding cuts and an increase in rental and insurance costs. The Island crew was unimpressed with the chairman of the Belltable board, John Horgan, on Tuesday's edition of the RTÉ Radio 1 arts programme, Rattlebag, when he declined either to confirm or deny that a change of location was on the cards. Hadn't that business been finished with last November, when the board announced that the lease on 69 O'Connell Street was to be indefinitely renewed? Island wasted no time in issuing a press release stating it was "appalled and shocked" at what it called the confusion the Belltable has recently created about itself.
As the largest single client of the centre, and as a company attempting to put together its 2004 programme, Island has "a right to know what's going on" with the Belltable, argues artistic director Terry Devlin - and from the management of the Belltable rather than from media reports. Strange, then, that neither Horgan nor the acting Belltable general manager, Peter McNamara, were aware of the existence of the press release, much less its content, when contacted by The Irish Times. Could Island have been attempting to give the Belltable a taste of its own medicine by going straight to the media, rather than simply picking up the phone and dialling a local number? That's all they have to do, says Horgan, who insists that the type of long-term forecast requested by Island is virtually impossible amid ongoing lease negotiations and uncertainty about funding for next year, but that he is more than willing to talk with the company.
However, Devlin paints a dire picture of recent communication between the two organisations, maintaining that a complaint from his end, that the Belltable had not been cleaned between performances of an Island production last year, went unanswered for three months. It's yet more evidence of what emerged last month during a City Arts Centre/Irish Theatre Magazine conference on theatre touring; relations between arts organisations and funding bodies may be tense, but relations between the arts organisations themselves, particularly between venues and production companies, are depressingly uncompromising.
Opening shot in film war
The newly re-named Screen Producers Ireland (SPI) has fired the first salvo in a campaign by film and TV producers to retain tax incentives for the industry, writes Hugh Linehan. SPI (formerly Film Makers Ireland) presented its report, by consultant Aileen O'Malley, to John O'Donoghue, Minister for Arts, yesterday. The Section 481 incentives for film production are due to run out in 2004.
But O'Donoghue has his own document on the issue due by the end of the summer. PricewaterhouseCoopers will be analysing the likely economic consequences of abolishing Section 481 in a report for the Irish Film Board and the Department of Arts, where officials have long been antipathetic to tax breaks for film. Whatever differences of emphasis may emerge between the two reports, both are sure to conclude that, without some form of tax-based incentive, film-making in Ireland will wither on the vine. Britain, Australia and Canada already have more attractive schemes than the Irish one, and the demise of Section 481 would leave this country in a hopelessly uncompetitive position.
According to O'Donoghue's adviser, Fiach MacConghail, it's "a fluke of timing" that two reports on the same subject will come out within a few weeks of each other. "An inter-departmental report may have more punch," says MacConghail. "But this may prove a helpful sequencing. SPI had a good meeting with the Minister at the Cannes Film Festival. He is convinced that some form of support is crucial. The key is the mix, keeping the balance between what's attractive and commercial, and what encourages indigenous artistic activity." SPI will publish its report on Monday, and the PriceWaterhouseCoopers document is due by the start of September. The crunch political decision on the issue is likely to come at the Cabinet table in October.
Taking up the baton
Frenchman Laurent Wagner has been announced as the new principal conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra for a three-year term beginning next September. He succeeds Proinnsías Ó Duinn, who has held the post for nearly a quarter of a century, and now becomes the orchestra's first conductor laureate. "This lifelong honour," says RTÉ, "will involve Proinnsías in maintaining an active conducting profile with the orchestra he has done so much to develop and with which he has such a special relationship." Speaking of his new appointment, Wagner said, "I have had the pleasure of working with the orchestra - both in concert performance and in opera - and have always been very impressed by its high musical standards. I look forward to leading the RTÉ Concert Orchestra to new shores and expanded horizons over the next three years." Wagner has been music director of the Saar State Opera in Saarbrücken, Germany, and opera director at St Gallen in Switzerland. His highest-profile work in Ireland has been with Opera Ireland, for whom he conducted productions of Strauss's Salome, Janácek's Katya Kabanova and Wagner's Flying Dutchman.
In a further change to the team working with the orchestra, executive producer Gareth Hudson is to become the RTÉCO's first associate conductor, focusing on "the further development of the orchestra's entertainment, family concert and light music output".
Something to dance about
At a time of funding uncertainties, cutbacks and general doom and gloom in the arts sector, a more positive story comes from Waterford. The city's Garter Lane Arts Centre has announced a renovation programme that, when completed, will provide new facilities including nine artists' studio spaces, a children's art room, dance floor and workshop space.
This refurbishment at the centre's second building at 5 O'Connell Street is in addition to the recent announcement of the €1.3 million for the centre's EU funded project, Artswave, which will present and promote the contemporary and traditional arts of Ireland and Wales.
Caroline Senior, artistic director of Garter Lane Arts Centre, praised both Waterford City Council and the Arts Council for investing "significantly in the building". Caitlin Doherty, Artswave director said, "The key to Artswave is the use of culture as a means to raise the profile of eastern Ireland and western Wales".
Cooking up a storm
Can a cookbook save Cork University Press? asks Mary Leland. That question lurked in the small print of the invitation to the launch on Monday of Paradiso Seasons, published by CUP's imprint Atrium.
The press is being re-evaluated by University College, Cork, which says no formal decision about its future has yet been taken. UCC is continuing its subvention, although salary, insurance and production costs have all risen.
No redundancies are envisaged from the staff of four - which includes publisher Sara Wilbourne - although publicity officer Nancy Hawkes has been redeployed to the Office of Public Affairs at UCC.
Costing an annual €200,000, the press is recognised as a prestigious element within the structure of the university. Currently experiencing international criticism for its recent proposal to close its pioneering Centre for Migration Studies, UCC insists that the object of the review process is to ensure the continuation of the press although with a reduced number of publications for a time.
The dilemma for the press is that of balancing its core business - publishing books which cost a lot to produce but have a limited readership - with reaching a more popular market through less costly, and less scholarly, publications. Achieving this, without threatening the confidence of prospective authors, critics and readers in its academic integrity, is just one of the challenges facing the press; another is the domestic tension, in that not everyone at UCC sees the point of CUP, especially as its links with the humanities, through titles associated with the arts, law, social sciences, history and literature, do not endear it to the strong science element within the university.
The Attic imprint (acquired five years ago) may be useful in this regard, but it is with its other imprint, Atrium, that the press hopes to balance the financial scales. While the effort now is to combine an aggressive marketing strategy with the qualitative development promoted by Sara Wilbourne, Cork University Press will not be the first Irish publisher to depend on its more popular titles to subvent its core products.
Although one of its most famous books is Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (1997), it was via an Atrium title that Denis Cotter's beautifully-designed Paradiso Cookbook, compiled from recipes of his vegetarian restaurant Café Paradiso, brought CUP to a very different audience two years ago. Much the same is now expected of its successor, Paradiso Seasons, launched last Monday by cheesemaker Bill Hogan.
Vienna validation
A work commissioned by RTÉ for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and recorded by Lyric fm at its world première in January 2003, has been awarded a special recommendation at the 50th International Rostrum of Composers in Vienna.
Empire States by contemporary Irish composer Deirdre Gribbin was first performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under principal guest conductor William Eddins at the National Concert Hall on January 31st last. Lyric fm presented the 2003 International Rostrum of Composers with the recording of that performance, together with another RTÉ commission, the garden of forking paths, by young Irish composer Rob Canning.
As a result of the Vienna accolade, the Lyric recording of Empire States will now be broadcast by 34 national networks on five continents. Out of 58 works presented from all over the world, Empire States was voted by the international delegation of radio producers, including composers, as one of 10 recommended works for broadcast.
RTÉ's director of music, Niall Doyle said it was "a great shot in the arm when one of the many pieces which RTÉ commissions for its Performing Groups receives this kind of international recognition."