The Abbey's artistic director, Ben Barnes, yesterday announced a major structural overhaul of the theatre's literary department. The position of dramaturg is being dissolved, literary manager Judy Friel is to concentrate on what Barnes calls "the pragmatic side of literary management" and the new job of commissions manager is being created.
"I see the role of commissioning manager as someone who will manage commissions, someone who will recommend new commissions. I also see that person as somebody who has a roving brief, who will be out in the field, as it were, scouting for new talent," says Barnes.
In his inaugural speech a year ago, Barnes announced his intention to "refocus the energy of the Peacock Theatre" with a programme of new Irish writing "from the younger generation", along with British, American and European drama and an exploration of classical work.
In reality, this widening of the Peacock's remit has so far reduced its commitment to new writing, and its programme for 2001, also announced yesterday, reflects this. Barnes is keen to point out that eight of the 20 productions are new writing. However, two of these are revivals (Ken Bourke's The Hunt for Red Willie and Paul Mercier's Down the Line), leaving only three real pieces of new writing in the Peacock's programme this year. Of these, only Eugene O'Brien's Eden is not by an established writer.
"I think we have a very good track record with new work, but you're right to say that a lot of them are from writers who are already established," Barnes admits. "There is some deficit in relation to young Irish writing."
A number of other companies have been stepping into the breach. For example, Druid Theatre Company's new writing initiative, "Druid Debuts", was nominated for a Special Judges' Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award. Druid's new writing manager, Charlie McBride, sees the Debuts not just in terms of new productions for Druid but as "nurturing writing in general". Indeed, the young Wexford writer Paul O'Brien's play, Janet's Table, is being staged by Town Hall Productions in Galway from next week; an earlier version, The Bower Wall, was a Druid Debut last year.
McBride voices concern about the lack of originality and theatricality in new writing, citing the present dominance of the monologue as a worrying and untheatrical trend. He puts this down partly to inexperience and hopes that by seeing a semi-staged production in front of an audience ("the ultimate laboratory"), young writers may gain "more focus on the theatricality".
Rough Magic's part-time literary manager, Loughlin Deegan, believes such initiatives could offer a solution to one of Ireland's limitations when it comes to new writing: the over-reliance on badly-stretched touring companies for productions, because of the paucity of building-based production houses. Given its bottom line, a company like Rough Magic has, says Deegan, to "look at alternative ways of providing productions for young writers".
Earlier this month, Rough Magic, with the Dublin Fringe Festival, launched its own new writing initiative, SEEDS. During the development of their scripts, young writers will work with a literary manager and a director who has experience of new writing. It is an approach that is familiar to new-writing theatres in Britain, but is not commonplace in Ireland. Deegan believes that companies which are under-resourced are staging new writing "that is under-developed, or developed too early".
The playwright and literary manager for Bedrock, Alex Johnston, is concerned, however, that a conservatism has crept into new Irish writing, with little in the way of formal experimentation, and worries that the new writing initiatives do not combat this.
"There's an awful lot of new writing initiatives, it seems, but it's encouraging a sort of homogeneity of voice. The idea that there might be another way of approaching it isn't available to people."
Playwright Enda Walsh, whose Disco Pigs was a huge hit, is concerned about the choices that are being made.
"The most worrying thing is taking on a new playwright, trying to develop their work and putting them in a position where they feel they've been given a break," he says. "And their work gets workshopped to death by a director who really needs to go away and write a play and get it out of their system." Like Johnston, Walsh also worries about the lack of adventurousness among young Irish writers, but believes it is not the fault of the structures but of "the people behind them and their inability and fear of trying something different".
Walsh believes that writers should write apart from companies.
"It's an absurd situation to get into when a young writer is writing with an outsider's artistic direction cluttering things," he says. "A writer must write alone and for themselves, and then try to protect how their work is produced."
Loughlin Deegan sees things differently, pointing to the lack of well-resourced producing houses for new writing in this country. As Helen Meany recently reported in this newspaper, new regional theatres are springing up everywhere - and yet where are the productions to put in them? Could not one of those theatres be subsidised as a designated new writing theatre? It could be an artistled production house with, as Deegan puts it, the "production muscle" to do a significant number of productions of new writing, like London's Bush Theatre and Royal Court or Edinburgh's Traverse, which has the power to produce five or six shows a year and has numerous writers in development. Until such a time, the Peacock remains the closest thing we have. And perhaps yesterday's announcements herald an opportunity, at last, to put some mechanisms in place to allow exciting new writing to flourish.
The deadline for submissions from playwrights who want to join Rough Magic's SEEDS project is tomorrow.
For details, contact Loughlin Deegan on telephone: 01-6719278or e-mail: roughmag@iol.ie, or Ali Curran on telephone: 01-6792320 or email: fringe@eircom.net
