AUTHOR AND playwright Gerard Mannix Flynn has told a judge that the Dublin Theatre Festival caused him losses of up to €60,000 by having reneged on an agreement to include one of his productions in its 50th year celebrations.
He said he had produced a “theatrical event” in the 2006 festival by investing €60,000 he had received in a court settlement from the State Compensation Board relating to his treatment as a child in a residential institution.
He had ploughed the money into his production of Letting Go Of That Which You Most Ardently Desire on a strict agreement with former festival director Don Shipley that another of his productions would be included in the 2007 anniversary festival.
Flynn’s production company, Far Cry Productions Ltd, New Line Road, Killorglin, Co Kerry, is suing the Dublin Theatre Festival Ltd, East Essex Street, Dublin, for €38,000 damages for breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation.
Mr Flynn told his counsel, Annette Kealy, that he had a part- oral part-written agreement with Mr Shipley to use his own money in 2006 on the basis he would produce Cunning, Baffling, Powerful, a play associated with addiction recovery, in the 2007 festival.
“In the heel of the hunt my production was not used in the 2007 festival and I felt betrayed,” he said.
“I had put a lot of money into the 2006 production and I also lost all anticipated profits and promotional advantages of participating in the high profile 2007 festival.”
Mr Flynn said his 2006 production of Letting Go . . . had been a sell-out success to audiences brought to each production in a blacked-out bus to a specially prepared set where they had been shown a ton-and-a-half of dumped deactivated weapons including AK 47s.
They had then been taken on to another setting where an actor played the final part in the production.
The theatrical event had been produced to introduce the public to the secrecy surrounding the deactivation of arms dumps as part of the Northern peace agreement.
Mr Flynn, who appeared in a pinstripe business suit with the words “The Law Suit” emblazoned across his shoulders, said none of any audience had been charged an admission fee.
He had self-financed Letting Go . . . as part of a deal of participating in the 50th anniversary festival.
He said Mr Shipley had never told him during negotiations that he intended vacating his post of artistic director, which subsequently occurred. He felt his company would have more than “replenished its coffers” had it been allowed to put on Cunning, Baffling, Powerful in the 2007 festival.
Mr Flynn said he had conducted talks about participating in the 2007 festival with its new artistic director Loughlin Deegan, but had eventually been told that the festival’s programme had already been filled and did not include Cunning, Baffling, Powerful.
Barra Faughnan, counsel for the Dublin Theatre Festival, said his clients denied that any such agreement as alleged with Mr Flynn existed.
On the basis of his own case, the festival organisers, by not putting on his 2007 production, had caused him to lose an opportunity to lose money rather than lose an opportunity to make it.
The case continues today.