ArtScape/Edited by Deirdre Falvey:In its day, it was considered to have been the quintessential "Troubles play", writes Jane Coyle.
Marie Jones's surreal comedy Somewhere Over the Balcony was set in West Belfast's dismal high-rise Divis Flats - now, thankfully, demolished - and based on the real-life experiences of some of the women who lived there. Written for Charabanc Theatre Company, of which Jones was a co-founder, the play starred Jones and two of her Charabanc colleagues, Eleanor Methven and Carol Moore, as three women who shared with the audience a bizarre series of incidents in what constituted a "normal" day in the world beneath their balcony.
Twenty years on, the play has been revived and will be directed by Nick Philippou, a former artistic director of Ulster Youth Theatre and Actors' Touring Company. Three members of the current generation of young Belfast actresses, Tara Lynne O'Neill, Katie Tumelty and Bronagh Waugh, will step into the dressing-gowns vacated by Jones, Methven and Moore.
Balcony Productions producer Imelda Foley says that the play is a piece of vintage Charabanc: "To my mind it is Marie's best play, in terms of subtext and imagery, where complete mayhem, posing as normality, is a metaphor for the extremes which become acceptable within unacceptable situations."
But, apart from the fact that almost any play by Jones is a virtual guarantee of full houses, why revive this play - and why now?
"For a new generation, it presents an insight into the everyday existence of people who lived at the centre of the Troubles, yet were not classed as 'victims'," says Foley. "It portrays a community turned upside-down by violence, with that perfect balance of sorrow and joy that engaged - and continues to engage - audiences. For me it's as timeless as, and akin to, Beckett; for Nick Philippou, it's the Greeks. There's pretension for you - but we both believe it!"
Somewhere over the Balcony is touring to Armagh, Enniskillen, Derry, Belfast (Belvoir Players Studio), Cookstown, West Belfast (An Cultúrlann), Strabane, Omagh and Coleraine.
Will Brennan take advice?
Budget day is looming, and with it a hope that the gains for the arts made in the past few years won't be lost. The disaster for arts bodies that followed the Budget in 2002 is a recent, sore memory. The cuts were relatively minor in overall national savings, but the ill-effects were way out of proportion, because the Arts budget is so slight to start with.
The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Séamus Brennan, has met a number of arts bodies recently and plans to meet more soon, having invited more than 20 arts organisations, groups, forums and individuals to meet him. Most will hope they can convince him of the importance of a strong Arts ministry and department.
The question-mark still hangs over the appointment of an arts adviser, the latest move being a Dáil question last Thursday week from John Perry (nominated by Olivia Mitchell): "To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if he will appoint an arts adviser to advise him on issues in relation to the arts; and if he will make a statement on the matter." In answer, Brennan said he is committed to "ensuring the arts remain at the heart of Government policy" and to "growing the arts and cultural communities and, in doing so, to highlight, in particular, their significant contribution to our country, culturally, socially and economically". While building on the commitments in the Programme for Government and in the National Development Plan, he is considering "how best to give effect to these objectives".
He set out key themes he wants to explore with arts organisations, including: increasing access to, and participation in, arts, culture and creative activities; building capacity, infrastructure and participation in the regions; enhancing the quality and reputation of Irish creative product at home and abroad; supporting the tourism market by bringing arts, culture and creative energies to the fore; the promotion of Irish arts, culture and creative sector practitioners worldwide; the opportunities and challenges posed by multiculturalism; greater engagement with the business community; and ensuring adequate fiscal and other supports for the arts in all its guises.
- The new teenagers are the mature people who have more energy, time, education, money and interest than older people have had in the past. And it's an audience hungry for, and open to, creative fulfilment. For those who want to tap into the possibilities, the National Gallery is holding a conference next week focusing on the cultural options in museums, arts and heritage venues for creativity in later life and lifelong learning.
Speakers include: Mary Davis, Special Olympics Ireland; David Anderson OBE, V & A Museum, London; Dr Lynda Kelly, Australian Museum; Catherine Cartmell, Scottish Museums Council; and Prof Des O'Neill, TCD Health Sciences
Centre. They will show how cultivating older audiences can raise the museum's profile, stimulate interest in exhibitions and the collections, help to gain a volunteer force, and bring a regular committed audience to the gallery. An associated exhibition, Drawing Studies: A Celebration, illustrates creativity in later life.
Creativity in Later Life - Museums, Galleries and Lifelong Learning is at the National Gallery of Ireland, Thurs/Fri Novmber 8th/9th. Book online www.nationalgallery.ie or e-mail jdrum@ngi.ie or Tel: 01-6633505
The Arts Show, the new RTÉ radio arts programme, begins on Monday, this time at 8pm on weekdays, presented by playwright Vincent Woods. Over the first few weeks the hour-long programme, produced by Sian O'Gorman, Kevin Brew and Aoife Nic Cormaic, will look at the work of writers Kate O'Brien and Philip Roth, the life of ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and the poetry of Seán Ó Ríordáin. Woods will be discussing with guests the challenges of making a living out of traditional music at the Cruinniú conference in Glór in Ennis and the show will be visiting the Armagh Pipers Festival.
Before he started to write full-time in 1989, poet and playwright Vincent Woods worked as a journalist with RTÉ, presenting on Morning Ireland, and in recent years he's been a guest presenter on arts programmes Rattlebag and The Eleventh Hour. He commented about his new programme: "The arts are as worthy of our attention as news, sport or politics. They're an essential part of what it is to be human . . . I know there's a big audience all around the country and I hope we can serve them well."
The 8pm timeslot - recalling the old days, when Mike Murphy's Arts Show was on in the early evening - is an improvement on the previous Eleventh Hour timing. Plenty of people will be hoping this marks a new beginning for Radio 1's arts programmes, following the axing of Rattlebag and the vampire-friendly scheduling that followed it. If you programme a show so late that most of its audience is gong to bed when it's on, it's no surprise if the listener figures disappoint. Catch-22.
Irish artist John Keating's solo show Fragments is currently running (until Nov 17) at the Galleria Compagnia del Disegno in Milan, writes Aidan Dunne. Keating has built up quite a track record in Italy, with solo and group exhibitions, and one can see why. As the title of his show, and a long-running series of work, suggests, he takes a fragmentary approach to his subject matter. His subjects are the generic classics: the human figure and still life. He renders them, mostly in pastel, in a way that suggests they are recalled from an earlier time, as though he is re-assembling fragments of a lost civilisation. So feelings of tragedy and transience are built into the finished Fragments. This idea clearly resonates in Italy, and Greece, to a greater degree than in many other European countries.
An exhibition by Dublin musician and artist John Lambert of montages themed on his new album, Penny Black, is on today and tomorrow from 3pm to 7pm at gallery thisisnotashop. Lambert's textured and intricate montages are assembled on top of old vinyl record jackets converted into wall hangings and feature antique collectables, military curios, old postcard details and various quotidian debris.
Thisisnotashop is at 26 Benburb Street, Dublin 7, on the redline Luas between the Smithfield and Museum stops. See: www.thisisnotashop.com and www.myspace/chequerboardmusic .