What a coup de theatre! The Abbey Theatre will next year present a major co-production with the Edinburgh International Festival. Catalan director Calixto Bietito on's Life is a Dream, featuring Olwen Fourere, at Edinburgh, will direct a new translation by Frank McGuinness of The Savage Plays by Valle Inclan, a major 19th-century Spanish writer. Last year Bietito directed the much-praised production of Calderon's Life is a Dream, featuring Olwen Fourere, at Edinburgh. The Savage Plays' large cast and crew will be Irish, and the work will have its premiere at the Edinburgh Festival next year, before travelling to the Dublin Theatre Festival.
The project is apparently the fruit of two years' planning and reflects the relationship which Abbey director Patrick Mason and his theatre have formed with Brian MacMasters of the Edinburgh Festival. Tom Murphy's The Wake, which plays at the King's Theatre at this year's festival, is doing huge business. This is the third time the Abbey has been invited to the international festival in six years, and the memory of The Well of the Saints and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme is still fresh in the public's mind.
Other Abbey plans include the major co-production with Barabbas which will be staged next year as well. First we will see Frank McGuinness's new play at the Dublin Theatre Festival, Dolly West's Kitchen, about a GI in Donegal during the second World War. His arrival has a major impact on the West family, and forces the son to confront his own homosexuality.
Chris Lee, writer-in-association with the Abbey, will also focus on family dynamics in his play for the smaller stage, The Map-maker's Sorrow, about a couple coming to terms with the loss of their son.
Shannon (A Celtic Ballet) (divils for the ballet, the Celts) is to be performed by Darrah Carr Dance at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre (August 17th-22nd). The work sees the river as "a mirror in which all of Irish history was reflected." Carr is part of Banshee, an Irish Women's Arts Collective based in New York which includes journalist Helena Mulkerns, actress Elizabeth White, poet Imelda O'Reilly, poet Emer Martin and singer Caitriona O'Leary. The group, all Irish except Carr, who is IrishAmerican, does what Carr describes as "cabaret-style" shows on Irish themes.
Email: darrahcarr@earthlink.net
Website: www.banshee.cnchost.com
The growing audience for jazz in Dublin will be well catered for in the coming months, with both the ESB Dublin Jazz Week and the MGD Sessions at Vicar Street lined up. The Vicar Street series opens on Saturday with the Ray Brown Trio and continues with some major names heading to the venue: Brad Mehldau (August 16th), Jimmy Scott (October 16th), Renee Rosnes (November 20th) and Diana Krall (December 2nd and 3rd).
Dublin Jazz Week, organised by the Improvised Music Company, will run at various city venues from September 20th to 26th and promises a varied programme of visiting and local musicians, including the Latin sound of Eliane Elias, bebop veteran Al Foster, and the UMO Jazz Orchestra from Finland.
In conjunction with the Dublin Jazz Festival, IMC is organising the Century Jazz Poll to compile a list of the 20 albums most highly regarded by jazz fans. The Irish Times on the Web's city guide, Dublin Live, is participating in this poll and those who wish to vote online can do so at: www.ireland.com/dublin
The results will be announced in the Dublin Jazz Week programme, and entries will be eligible for the Century Jazz Poll competition, three winners of which will receive the complete set of 20 polltopping CDs from Tower Records and two tickets for all the headlining acts in the festival.
Eight secondary school students have curated an exhibition at IMMA, which opens on Tuesday. Some- bodies is culled from IMMA's collection and includes work by Dorothy Cross, Janine Antoni, Robert Ballagh, John Kindness, Nigel Rolfe and Kathy Prendergast, among others.
The exhibition is a joint project with Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, where it will be on display from October 1st to November 4th and then it moves on to Cavan County Museum, from November 16th to early 2000. It may then go on to the Tara Gallery in Duleek, Co Meath. Tel: 01-6129900
The First Nights series in Temple Bar Square at 9.30 p.m. features new comedy tomorrow - collect your free tickets from Temple Bar Properties . . . The Blas Summer School of traditional music in Limerick runs from Monday, with tutors including Martin Hayes (dream fiddle), Niall Vallely (whizzing concertina), Tommy Hayes (throbbing bodhran) and Catherine Foley (dance) - tel: 061-202565 . . . Tionscnamh Lugh is running a series of concerts at lunchtime in Glenveagh National Park and in the evenings at the Lakeside Centre, Dunlewey O Maonaigh family, Paddy Glackin and Micheal O Domhnaill - tel: 075-32127 . . . The deadline is July 23rd for a writer's resi- dency at the Irish Writers' Centre, in co- operation with Dublin Corporation and the Arts Council - tel: 01-8721302 for information . . . A number of places are still available for observers wishing to avail of tuition at the Dublin Master Classes' International Orchestral Conducting Course running from July 14th to 23rd, directed by the NSO's principal guest conductor, Gerhard Markson - tel: 012821303 . . .
Email: frontrow@irish-times.ie
