Art Scape Deirdre Falvey The Abbey Theatre is to change its seating configuration early next year in a move to improve its auditorium for both audience and performers.
The change involves abandoning the stalls/balcony format and raking the seating down from the front of the balcony to the front of the stage. Plans have been drawn up, and fire safety, disability access and other regulations have been taken into account. A Dublin-based contractor was to have started the project but it is now being put out to tender and the work is expected to take place early next year.
Director Fiach MacConghail has been looking into the possibilities for improving the frequently maligned auditorium, and several recent shows at the Peacock have involved using different seating configurations, almost in traverse or in the round.
Now the theatre has commissioned John Keogan (of Keogan Architects), a specialist in seating, and brother of theatre designer and Abbey associate director Paul Keogan, and the legendary theatre designer Jean Guy Lecat (best known for his work with Peter Brook as well as his designs for the Tramway in Glasgow and Théâtre de la Gare d'Orsay in Paris) to come up with an alternative seating plan for the Abbey.
Plans are at an advanced stage and MacConghail aims to improve on the energy flow between audience and actors, pointing out that the natural sightline of actors on stage is a wooden beam on the balcony, while the large aisles and fan shape also create a distance and lack of intimacy so that "the communal ritual experience is dislocated and alienated". The relationship between artist and audience is crucial in theatre, he says.
Lecat, Keogan, Tony Wakefield of the Abbey and the Abbey team have collaborated on the plans, a prototype has already been done, and MacConghail is very excited about how it will offer a more intimate theatre experience, and allow more possibilities. "The key thing is that it allows me to look at a new body of work and to improve the audience's relationship with the stage," he said.
The plans will involve the loss of some seating capacity, probably 50-100 seats, which MacConghail says is not significant. The Abbey currently has between 580 and 628 seats. It won't reduce what the theatre can achieve, says MacConghail, but will allow him to be more flexible in programming, and mix in some shows that are more risky at the box office, or programme plays that are too big for the Peacock but too small for the present Abbey - in terms of audience intimacy.
The work will take about 10 days, and the Abbey could not confirm the budget, saying it is commercially sensitive information, but the theatre will be paying for it.
Byrne chosen for Venice
The artist Gerard Byrne will represent Ireland at next year's Venice Biennale. He was the choice of the Irish commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick, director of the Limerick City Art Gallery who was, in turn, appointed by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council last week, writes Aidan Dunne. A number of curators were invited to apply for the post of Irish commissioner, with details of the artist or artists they would bring to Venice, a shortlist was drawn up and Fitzpatrick was selected on the basis of interview. Byrne is a young artist who has built a significant international profile very quickly. His conceptually based works employ a wide range of media, including photography, installation and film, and typically put cultural values and conventions from earlier historical moments under the spotlight. He has worked with Fitzpatrick in the past.
Fitzpatrick, who is also curating the visual arts strand of this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival, has proved to be a dynamic and progressive director at the Limerick gallery, with impressive people skills. That should be useful in the notoriously difficult working environment of Venice, which has provided its fair share of headaches for commissioners. Bureaucracy, the pecking order and logistical difficulties are the most commonly cited issues that generate difficulties. At the same time, Venice is unsurpassed in terms of art world prestige and exposure, with huge number of art professionals passing through.
It is perhaps unsurprising that the preference was for a single artist this time around, given that the opposite course was chosen last time, with an Irish ensemble representing the country. Rumour has it that Byrne declined an invitation to join in on that occasion. Good strategic thinking. He is one of the few artists who have caught the eye of international curators and can be relied upon to deliver something special. Culture Ireland and the Arts Council have recommended an open selection process and a longer lead-in for Venice 2009.
A winner for Kilkenny
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Danish harpsichordist, conductor, music director of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO) and artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen has just been awarded the 2007 Leonie Sonning Music Prize. The €80,000 prize is awarded each year to a musician whose contribution to his art is internationally recognised as outstanding - Igor Stravinsky was the first winner in 1959 and more recently the award has been given to Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Yo-Yo Ma, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Alfred Brendel. The EUBO will be at the Kilkenny Arts Festival next month. Selected from the top 100 young baroque musicians from across Europe, its members will perform at St Canice's Cathedral on Friday, August 18th, with music director Mortensen and soloists Sophie Rebreyend and Sarah Humphrys and a programme including Telemann, Muffat, Handel, Vivaldi and Rameau. Mortensen is a leading exponent of early music and during his career he has been a member of a boys' choir, a rock band, baroque orchestras throughout Europe, and is now a soloist, chamber musician and conductor. www.kilkennyarts.ie, www.sonningmusik.dk, www.eubo.org.uk.
Gone from the Goethe-Institut
After four busy years as director of the Goethe-Institut Dublin, Dr Matthias Müller-Wieferig is saying Auf Wiedersehen to his Irish friends and preparing to leave for Denmark, to begin his new posting as director of the Goethe-Institut Copenhagan, writes Catherine Foley. Rolf Stehle, his successor at the institute, part of the worldwide organisation which promotes German language and culture, will arrive shortly, after five years as director of the Goethe-Institut Beirut. Stehle was formerly a lecturer at the University of Limerick.
Highlights of Müller-Wieferig's upcoming autumn programme include involvement with the Dublin Theatre Festival, which features productions from Berlin of Emilia Galotti at the Gaiety and Hedda Gabler at the Abbey Theatre; participation in Opera Theatre Company's production of Beethoven's Fidelio at Kilmainham Gaol in September; and co-operation with the OPW, which plans to celebrate its 175th anniversary with an exhibition of the work of architect Erich Mendelsohn in Dublin.
Since Müller-Wieferig's arrival, he has been struck by how "incredibly young, committed and open" people are in the cultural, artistic life in Dublin. "I found so many directors of institutions and galleries who were just very, very young, who had loads of experience and a very open eye especially for the international art scene," he said.
Explaining the institute's increasing involvement in literary, artistic, musical and dramatic activities, he adds, "we consider ourselves agents and experts in the German cultural field and if we are asked and involved we help to put up strong programmes and to invite the best artists from Germany".
The visibility of the institute and its range of activities has increased, especially since his introduction of the Patrons and Friends of the Goethe-Institut Dublin Scheme, which includes 11 Irish-German companies.
Under his directorship, the small Return Gallery in the Goethe-Institut in Merrion Square was opened to support upcoming Irish, German and international artists, under the curatorship of Irish art experts. "What is most amazing and promising now is the development of some further venues in the city . . . there are only very few that can really house and accommodate big-scale productions, either Irish or international . . . They are all in need of venues to perform properly to stage very good high-profile productions. That development is in sight."