It seems right, somehow, that Colm O Briain should be directing a new production of Happy Days. Something of a Beckett character's determination to go on, to repeat the cycle, to "begin again. Fail again. Fail better" clings to him. He seems to live resolutely in the present; whatever project he is engaged in commands his full attention. So now, in the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, he skips up the stairs two at a time and wants to talk about Winnie, buried up to her neck in a mound of sand, Willie at her feet, and their creator, Beckett. For this co-production between Two Chairs Theatre company and the Civic Theatre, O Briain and Nuala Hayes, who plays Winnie, have been reading the text for the past few months, absorbing it. Today they are joined by Mick Lally as Willie, his head barely visible on the floor behind her.
"You must do what Beckett asks you to do, but you also need to understand what he's getting at," O Briain says. "The template he gives you requires huge intellectual capacity to move around his script. Suddenly in rehearsal you'll have a breakthrough and realise: that's what he means. There is an apparent contradiction between the explicit stage directions he gives and the fact that it really is a journey of discovery for the actors and director.
"Happy Days is like a score. You just have to listen to the mesmeric quality of the rhythms and to the words. What Winnie says doesn't present any surprises, the words are not difficult, but the audience has to really hear her. They must be with her every word of the way."
O Briain has directed Beckett many times before, notably I'll Go On, the superb adaptation of his novel trilogy, first performed by Barry McGovern in 1985, and Not I, with Edel King (Twink) for the 1991 Beckett Festival. But Happy Days marks a return to theatre after a long interval spent on "the other side": as policy adviser to Michael D. Higgins, Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in the last government. A former director (1975-1983) of the Arts Council, O Briain has always defied conventional career paths by zig-zagging between arts policy, administration and creative practice, with stints of television producing for RTE and university lecturing along the way. "I'm getting a real buzz from being back at the coalface," he says. "The nature of decisionmaking is totally different." His return to television two years ago, as producer of the now defunct books programme, Undercover, offered similar satisfactions. He enjoyed having to make immediate decisions, with very visible consequences.
"The problem with policy is the lead time from decision to delivery. You don't see the results." He laughs at the thought that when he was helping to formulate the Cultural Development Incentive Schemes, which enabled Tallaght's Civic Theatre to become a reality, he had not foreseen that he would be working in it as a practitioner. The transition from being at the centre of policy development for the State's first, high-profile, arts ministry in the Cabinet, to being unemployed and invisible was bound to be difficult. "The first three months were almost like cold turkey. It took a while for it to sink in that not only was I not required to have a view on everything - and not just on the arts but on every area of government - but that nobody gave a damn what my view was.
"The withdrawal process was physical, psychological and emotional. When you feel the suction of power away from you, that rush is out of proportion to the gradual accumulation of power at the start.
"But the good thing was that I could begin to live again, to have time for a personal life, to read." Now he's not planning very far ahead: he has work lined up until January. Sitting in this immaculate, purpose-built venue, O Briain is very conscious of the transformed context of Irish theatre and contrasts it to the early years in Project Arts Centre, of which he was founding chairman.
"I feel in danger of being redundant, to be honest," he says. "I'm competing for work with younger, more talented people. I hope that there's room for me. There has always been the establishment and anti-establishment in theatre and I now have to place myself in the establishment - though one hopes that one's work is always at the edge and not cosseted or unadventurous. I hope I never lose sense of doing new things, moving into different areas.
"But there are so many good writers, directors and actors around now. There have been recent productions: for example, Conall Morrison's work at the Abbey, which have to be celebrated for the sheer imagination and diversity of skills involved. It's not just that there are more opportunities now. The leap has been both quantitative and qualitative.
"Yet, and I'm going to sound like an old fogey - I can almost hear myself saying: in our day - but when we were starting out, we had a shared mission. Some people are now coming in to the arts because it's a job. They have a cool approach to their work. For me this was always a hot area, there were excitements, frictions, upsets, because we cared.
"My cohort came of age with the idea that everything was possible. We thought we could change the world. We were wrong but we tried. Everything was political when I was a student. Now I wonder if anything is."
A former chairman of the Labour Party (1983-85), following his eight-year stint as director of the Arts Council, O Briain is still politically active. He was director of the recent local elections for the Labour Party. When we discuss that party's achievements and direction, he acknowledges that, as highlighted in the recent UN report on poverty, issues of social inequality and social justice in Ireland remain as acute as ever - if not more so.
"Yes, that's true, and it may not always appear that these are the party's primary concern. The question of managerialism in the arts has relevance in the political context, too, and I may have been guilty of this. When we were in government we felt that having stated our objectives, the political impulse was clear; the challenge was to deliver. We appeared to be `good managers', but what we were managing was a programme for change.
"You can look around and say that all the problems remain. It's like Happy Days: Beckett is reflecting that no matter what you do, things remain the same - but you don't not do it. No matter how awful the context in which you're trying to live, not trying is much worse. This is optimistic. It's a way of having meaning, even if things remain the same."
It's optimistic in the philosophical sense, certainly, but doesn't this seem a rather modest assessment of our capacity to change anything? "Yes, perhaps," O Briain responds after a long pause, "but can the human spirit always be seeking change?
"I had an outlandish ambition to change the world, which gave rise to some of the trauma I experienced in my early years. I set myself up for massive failure and massive depression. Yet I feel that things have changed and I've played a small part in making that possible. Now it's up to younger people to pursue it.
"If I want to go on living, I have to grow up, and that means recognising that I can't change the world. Otherwise, I'm running into an early grave. And, you know, I'm not in a rush to embrace mortality . . ."
He laughs, glances at his watch, leaps up and is gone. That mound of sand, another day, "another happy day" awaits.
Happy Days opens at The Civic Theatre, Tallaght on Wednesday September 15th. Booking from 01- 4627477. It tours to Dunamaise Theatre, Portlaoise (October 5th- 9th), Everyman Palace, Cork (October 12th-16th) and Garter Lane, Waterford (October 19th-21st)
