With more theatres than works to fill them, it's time to turn our attention back to staging innovative, daring plays and nurturing new talent, writes Karen Fricker.
Of all art forms, theatre is best able, and most expected, to reflect, distil and help us understand the times in which we live. More immediate than film or literature, more overtly topical and idea-driven than music, dance or opera, theatre is where we watch life happen before our eyes and, with luck, emerge wiser. Throughout its history, Irish theatre has played a crucial role in how the State and its people see themselves, and through its export it has helped carry messages about Ireland and the Irish to the rest of the world. Irish theatre has helped Ireland change and helped Ireland understand change.
But there are times when change is so rapid that it becomes difficult to step back and take it all in. That's what's happening at present in Ireland and in Irish theatre. We live in cacophonous, confusing (and exciting) times, times we don't entirely understand yet.
Revelations about Church, State and business-world corruption emerge seemingly daily, bringing to the surface a subtext of guilt, doubt and repression that has run under Irish society for many decades. Our streets are filled with new faces, new ethnicities and new diversity: the State and its people face massive challenges as we struggle to redefine Ireland and Irishness in a European and a global context (this writer is aware of her own presumptions as she articulates that "we" in an American accent). The new philosophy and reality of Government planning infuse all aspects of our lives; the arts world and the Arts Council, as the ongoing debate about recent council funding decisions makes clear, are out of sync in their understanding of how planning should be interpreted in an artistic context.
It is no surprise, then, that Irish theatre is in a state of chassis as it tries to adjust to a new national reality that is still under construction. If we want to start to describe that chassis, in an attempt to grasp the bigger picture, a good place to start is by defining terms: when we say Irish theatre, what do we mean? It's a phrase that's used to stand in for a number of entities, organisations and traditions.
Irish theatre is the ever-evolving canon of plays that, we traditionally understand, burst into life with the Irish revival at the end of the 19th century, though scholarship is urging us to widen that view to include plays and performance texts from well before that time.
Irish theatre is a constantly shifting and diversifying field of practice, in which theatre artists explore, interrogate and celebrate their experiences, perceptions and ideas, sometimes through the staging of new or existing Irish and international texts, sometimes through improvisatory, physical or otherwise non-text-based means. Irish theatre is the network of buildings and companies in which this activity takes place.
And Irish theatre is an industry, a group of individuals and organisations that work to bring productions to life: actors, designers, directors, technicians, venue managers, front-of-house staff, producers, administrators, board members, funders, critics and audiences.
To take the pulse of "Irish theatre" at any stage in history involves taking stock of all these sides of the field and placing them in the larger context of the cultural moment. In times of cultural imbalance, one side of the field often overshadows the others: at the moment it's the industrial and structural sides that have come to the fore. Most of the energies, and the discourse, around Irish theatre in very recent years have been around organisations, buildings and funding, most obviously apparent in the venues that have cropped up all over the country.
By contrast, the artistic side of Irish theatre is in a lull - or that's the perception, at least. There is a lot of hand-wringing going on, much of it in the pages of this newspaper, about the parlous state of Irish playwriting - about the inability of Irish writers for the stage to speak in a clear voice about what's happening around them, and even an assertion that by not taking a moral stance on our times, those writers are failing the nation. I'd challenge that argument on several fronts: first of all, Irish playwrights are out there - lots of them - and they are writing about the state of the nation and the new realities we face.
I saw some 60 new works of Irish theatre last year in my travels as an Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards judge and can testify to the (sometimes overwhelming) topicality of the material: plays about corrupt Taoisigh, about the Magdalene laundries, about IRA killings, Dublin crime, the State's failure of the working classes, racism, homosexuality and alcoholism; plays about real-life figures of Ireland past and present, from Brendan Behan and Alex Higgins to Christy Moore and Micheal MacLiammoir. But we also had plays, particularly from younger writers, that contained no specific reference to Ireland or "Irish issues" at all, plays that focused on the characters' intellectual preoccupations, inner lives and interpersonal problems.
Inevitably, we'll see more plays like this in coming years, as a new, media- saturated and more globalised generation of writers comes to the fore, and all the hand-wringing in the world's not going to stop that. However tempting, it's impossible to prescribe what creative people are going to, or "should", make art about, and it may well be impossible for one writer, in one work of theatre, to truly take account of the conflicting, layered reality of Irish life.
Would we love it if another Plough And The Stars, another Playboy Of The Western World, another Sive, another Bailegangaire, another Translations came along? Of course we would, and it's the responsibility of those of us who work in the theatre to create the circumstances in which that is most likely to happen. Perhaps it will; perhaps another great talent will emerge with ideas and expressive powers capable of cutting through the confusion to discover the words and images "adequate to our predicament".
But perhaps those perceptions can't be contained in a traditionally written and staged play; perhaps a devised or multi-authored work will provide the best means to suggest the discordant tenor of Irish life today. Let's not forget, also, that much of the activity of Irish theatre involves staging works that aren't Irish at all: The last two Best Production awards at the Irish Times/ESB competition have gone to English plays in Irish productions.
To take stock of the nation through its theatre, I am arguing, we have to look at the spectrum of work being produced and presented, and if we are experiencing something of an artistic slowdown, there is still a lot of vital, important, topical activity going on. We also have to look at the health of the theatre industry itself, and it is here that we have enormous reason for concern. Irish theatre is way too dependent on the Arts Council as its primary source of funding, and the industry has done too little to articulate a deep discomfort - often heard at individual and company level - with the council's planning mentality and the inadequacy of its policies, as articulated currently in the Arts Plan 2002-2006, to map on to the slippery reality of the creation of art. There is danger, in a time of economic downturn, of fewer risks being taken, as the Abbey Theatre's shockingly conservative 2003 program sadly testifies. There are not enough productions out there to fill all the theatres the country now contains; we need to shift the focus from buildings to production companies and repertoire.
And we need to get very worried, and very active, about the next generation. In the past couple of years, the mavericks and independent spirits who emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s - the founders of such companies as Barabbas, Bedrock, Blue Raincoat, Corcadorca, Corn Exchange, Loose Canon and Meridian - have become the establishment, a particularly disconcerting development given how few Young Turks have come down the pike to challenge them.
Too few writers and directors of note have emerged in the past eight or so years, and the economic boom probably has a lot to do with this - there were simply more tempting and lucrative jobs available outside of the arts, and creative young people who might in other times have tried putting on a show may have taken their energies to other professions.
Rocketing costs of living, space hire and materials have also taken their toll; it's becoming increasingly difficult for new companies to afford even a tiny production (save the Crypt!). Yes, the truly keen and the truly talented will find their way to break through, but there are too many obstacles placed in their way.
A great history, a confusing present, challenges for the future. There is so much to play for in today's Ireland; we are all searching for answers. Theatre has been, and continues to be, the perfect place to ask the questions. We need to fight to keep it healthy.
Karen Fricker is editor of Irish Theatre Magazine, the next issue of which is out this month, and was an Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards judge in 2001-2.
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An actor's life: it beats working at McDonald's
By Shane Hegarty.
It is not pensionable. You might spend more time out of work than in it. The banks won't touch you. The actor's life, then, is not for everyone.
"I've not been out of work for a year and a half, but I'm still in no position to think about a mortgage, even though I'm a lucky one," says Cathy Belton, right, a stage actress for 15 years and who also played Lucy in Glenroe.
"Banks see you as high risk. Besides, theatre here just doesn't pay. Even if you were to work every day you wouldn't be in a position to get a mortgage."
She points out that the average wage for a stage actor is €500 a week, with the Abbey's €710 a week as good as it gets in commercial theatre.
"The only way to work comfortably in Ireland is if you're lucky and can subsidise it through voice-over work. Otherwise, you wait for a movie or some TV to come along. It's a nightmare for young actors."
Although Belton hasn't spent half her career mollifying social-welfare officers, she knows plenty of actors who have. They are often sent for jobs unrelated to their profession, with one experienced actress recently handed an interview for McDonald's. Another actor was told he had to apply for a position as one of Santa's elves. "They saw it as an acting job," says Belton. "It's kind of horrific."
The welfare system's approach needs to change, she says, whether it's through the use of workshops or work experience. "I'm not saying we sit on our backsides, but there needs to be a better understanding of the realities of the job."
In rehearsal for Rough Magic's production of Declan Hughes's Shiver (which opens at Project arts centre, Dublin, on March 28th), she is uncertain about the future.
"Even now I'm worried about what happens after this play, having seen that the first cuts made were to arts budgets. I think we're seeing the start of a hell of a tough time for actors." Increasing numbers, she warns, will turn to the hardship fund of Irish Actors Equity, their union, for help.
A few years ago, realising that "this is how it'll be for the rest of my life", Belton considered leaving full-time acting to take an MA in national-school teaching. "But I knew that I wouldn't be happy. For all the negatives, I'm still privileged to be doing something I love. It's inspiring."
